A system and method facilitating diagramming is provided. The diagram system includes a diagram that stores shape element(s) and an application program interface (API) that includes a control that facilitates access to the diagram. The control maintains state information associated with the diagram. For example, application(s) can employ the API to access and/or modify the diagram.The system employs a rich framework to support both document and diagram state. Because the same framework is used to manipulate the state in a consistent way, it becomes much easier to keep the diagram synchronized with the underlying data than with conventional system(s).