I've been looking for hours. Its possible it doesn't exist and I should just get over it.... But I have a state machine I'm designing and it isn't humanly possible to layout the shapes in some sort of clear manner. Not that a program could do better but it would be a good starting point.
Does anyone know of a automated shape layout utility for Windows Workflow in Visual Studio 2008?
As far as I know there is no tool or utility available that will auto arrange your states for you.
But if you are interested in giving it a try you basically need to change the Workflow1.layout file that is automatically generated as soon as you change the default layout and save the workflow.
The format is quite simple. It is basically an XML file containing the size and location for each state and the layout of the state switch connectors. I guess the hard part is getting everything to line up nicely.
I don't know of any tool that lays things out nicly. I also found that the designer would rearrange anything I layout out myself for no good reason. My best tip was to delete the .layout file as this would line everything up along the left hand edge of the designer (at least nothing would be "hidden" off the designer service).