At the core is the Visio graphics engine. A Visio drawing is typically constructed by using a drag and drop technique to add shapes to a drawing. These shapes are then positioned, resized, and connected to other shapes to create a finished drawing. Stencils are predefined collections of shape masters. By defining these master shape objects, the user can create very complex drawing documents without having to draw anything by hand.
Templates provide a starting point for a new drawing.
A template can contain pre-drawn elements like title boxes, logos, and frames. Templates can also pre-define scale, drawing size and paper size and many other characteristics of the environment. The Visio product provides a type library that defines the automation interface. Add-ons can be created using VBA, which is built in to the product, or any other development tool for creating Microsoft Windows . The contents of a typical Visio solution will contain a number of elements that make it well rounded and complete.