App settings

The tray groups its options into Drawing preferences (the drawing conventions plus Style settings, covered under House style & USPTO conventions) and Advanced, which controls how the app and server behave. This page covers those toggles. Toggling one restarts the server (a second or two).

Under Drawing preferences

  • Glue connectors to shapes (off by default): when on, the assistant can attach connector ends to shapes, so arrows follow when you drag a shape in Visio. Left off normally: glued arrows re-route themselves, which can surprise you mid-edit. A trade-off, not a defect.
  • Obstacle-aware auto-routing (on by default): connectors automatically detour around boxes in their way instead of cutting through them. Turn off only if you’d rather place every route yourself.

Under Advanced

  • Start with Windows: launches the app at sign-in, so the server is ready before you open Visio.
  • Keep AI assistants connected (on by default): if an assistant app update wipes the Vizspect connection, the app quietly re-registers it, so it keeps working without you re-running anything.

Under Advanced → Remote access (Mac / Parallels)

These live in their own submenu because they only matter when another machine reaches Vizspect, typically a Mac running the assistant, with Visio in a Parallels VM. A single-machine setup never needs them. The full walkthrough is Using Vizspect from a Mac.

  • Allow LAN connections (off by default): lets another machine reach the server over the network. Turning it on also turns on the sign-in token so the drawing server is never exposed unauthenticated.
  • Require sign-in token (off by default): when on, the AI client must present a secret token on every request. Turn it on whenever the server is reachable beyond this machine (LAN / Parallels, or a hosted assistant) so only a client holding the token can read or change your drawing. Get the token from Copy sign-in token in the same submenu. It’s the same secret Allow LAN connections turns on automatically.

The submenu also holds Copy sign-in token and Copy control token; see Connecting your AI assistant for what each token is.

For registering and reconnecting assistants, and the Check connection… status window, see Connecting your AI assistant.