[Epicyon]

Is there a way to import a Visio file (binary or xml) that preserves the Visio layers in the document?

[pjp]

There's a fundamental difference between Visio layers and our layers that makes it impossible for us to import their layers.
Layers in OmniGraffle can be thought of as a sheet of glass, residing above and below each other, with objects on them that render appropriately.

Visio layers however, are more of a "named category", and don't represent in that sense of sheets of glass, Visio has the added benefit of allowing an object to reside in more than one layer, their layers are more akin to a "tagged keyword" than a sheet of glass.

Right now, we do support layers when you export to Visio, but not when importing.

We do have a feature request for supporting Visio's categories upon import. Did you email us about this as well? If so, I’ve added your comments from that email in our tracker.

[bartzumbari]

I hear what you're saying about layer importing, but it would still be a valuable capability if you could at least make a go at some sort of mapping from visio layers to omnigraffle layers. It sounds like the mapping is straightforward if the object in visio is only assigned to one layer (this is certainly always the case for myself.) If the visio object is assigned to multiple layers, then you could just choose the first one.

Bart