Comments on: 3D Extruded Map of USA

By: Visio Services refreshing from SQL store procedures - MSDN Blogs

Visio Services refreshing from SQL store procedures - MSDN Blogs — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 09:59:36 +0000

[...] US state shapes used in this sample were provided by VisGuy.com, click here. [...]

By: chrisb9381

chrisb9381 — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:19:46 +0000

Can this be conditionally formatted for color and “height” of each state?

By: Visio Guy

Visio Guy — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:45:34 +0000

Hi Thomaseena,

I’d need a normal map first, to which I could apply the 3D treatment. I think the map sources are opening up more and more, so there’s decent free stuff out there, but I haven’t had time to look into it.

By: Thomaseena

Thomaseena — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:08:05 +0000

This is a fabulous map! Anyone know where I could find one like this that breaks the states down into counties?

By: Visio Guy

Visio Guy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:30:26 +0000

Hi Joshua!

Visio isn’t really Silverlight or Flash, and wasn’t created with animation in mind.

That being said, Visio does have a nice automation model that lets you do lots of things. There are even MouseOver, MouseMove events, but they aren’t as easy to use as similar items in Windows forms are.

In our forum, people have been experimenting with Visio animation: you might want to have a look at Visio Animation Template.

A more typical Visio-like behavior would be to implement some logic (in the ShapeSheet of each state) that allowed a user to double-click or right-click and choose an option that toggled the shape between flat and extruded.

Since Visio diagrams are very likely to be printed or copied to PowerPoint, I think it is logical that static graphics are the priority, rather than animated “Flash-like” effects. But I think animation and live interaction are coming on strong, and will soon be expected to some degree in just about every application. The trick is to allow users to print something that makes sense, and a lot of live, flashy flash-content fails in this respect.

You can also add a mouse-over, pop-up comments to shapes, via: Insert > Edit Shape Screen Tip. This gives diagrams a bit more live interaction.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:26:25 +0000

So is there a way to automate this so when a user scrolls over a state it automatically extrudes and then even click the state when it is extruded to go to a new page of the state (hyperlink)?

By: Fred Gross

Fred Gross — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:16:03 +0000

Visio Guy,
I love this, it’s great ! I also agree with David that if we could rotate either the entire map or rotate each state individually, that would be something that would really rock !

By: Moutaz

Moutaz — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:11:14 +0000

Thank you for your reply keep up the good work

By: Visio Guy

Visio Guy — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:02:20 +0000

Hi Moutaz, there’s really no easy way to do this, and I haven’t made a map of Mexico. It involved a lot of automation and tricks.

By: Moutaz

Moutaz — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:59:22 +0000

Hello

Great work on this map, I was wondering if you have done this for a mexico map before? Also if I wanted to go about doing that how would I start? Any help would be appreciated

Thank you

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:25:56 +0000

Nice! Really nice. I appreciate the effort you put into this.

By: David

David — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:56:08 +0000

Great work – any idea on how you could rotate the entire shape (US), keeping the states intact
but rotated too, as to gain various perspective views, keeping the polygons’ (states) original shapes?

By: art

art — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:34:21 +0000

This is fantastic! Would like to see something similar for the whole world! Thanks.