Looking at the number page views and download stats, the original Visio Crayon Network Shapes seem to be quite popular.

I’m happy to announce that they have been improved and extended! If you’re designing a new network or planning modifications to an existing network, these shapes are great for visually emphasizing that you are currently in the DESIGN STAGE ONLY, or this is JUST AN IDEA and that you don’t plan on working over the weekend to implement it just yet!

Virgil from Endless Consulting in Queensland Australia loved Don Harris’ original Crayon Network Shapes so much that he downloaded them, improved them and added six new shapes to the set.

The new shapes bring the total to 28 fabulous kiddy-crayola-styled network shapes. The new offering now includes these shapes:

• Firewall2
• Search Server
• Storage
• Virtual Machines
• Virtual Machine (Guest)
• Virtual Server (Host)

Here’s a look at the newbies:

And here’s the complete set of 28 Visio shapes:

click to view larger image

One nice touch that Virgil added was to remove the white block backgrounds from each shape. See the older shapes in the top of the next figure have an inelegant rectangular background? Well, the new shapes do not. This not only looks cleaner, but it allows you to put shapes closer together on a page. Connectors also can appear to connect more directly to the equipment instead of hovering in space.

Thanks for the great work, Virgil!

Visio Crayon Network Shapes 2 (718.66 kB) - 4810