I’ve been working on a new multi-shape that you will hopefully find useful for presentations and process documentation. It should be on offer within then next week or two.
As I was building it, I was …

Learn twelve text-handling techniques for creating Visio SmartShapes with text that behaves well!

It’s kind of Pi Day today, so we are celebrating by talking about a variety of circle- and angle-related end-user and shape-developer related topics! Read and learn about all things round and Visio!

It’s nice to let your audience know where they are in a document, and how much further until the end. This is especially true if your Visio document does double-duty as a presentation.
A progress bar-style …

Learn a ShapeSheet trick that lets you convert Visio shape text to meaningful numbers and quantities, and build a calculator that accepts free-form text as input.

Learn how to create a bar-graph Visio shape which visually responds to data. Once you’ve built this SmartShape, we’ll then show you how to link it to external data imported from Excel!

Today we’ll continue our discussion of title block topics by talking about how to control the location of text chunks in a shape’s text block.
Sure, Visio text has tabs, which we’ll put to use. But …

Learn about conditional formatting of Visio SmartShapes, and enjoy an ancient treat from the dusty, musty Visio archives!

Download and learn with this Visio file and SmartShape that relate to today’s momentous US Presidential inauguration!

In our last article on Visio title blocks, Title Blocks #1: How to Display Existing Document Information, we were introduced to a remarkable title block shape.
This single shape could display any of four different date-related …

Make your text stand out with a ShapeSheet formula that chooses a contrasting text-color, based on the fill color of your shape.

Create more intelligent title block shapes by inserting fields into the text of your Visio shapes that automatically link to information about the document! Your title blocks will be smarter, your drawings completed more quickly, and you’ll spend less time re-keying information!

Learn about the benefits of Visio SmartShapes, the power of the ShapeSheet, and how a few parameterized Visio shapes can replace a whole set of “dumb” clip-art symbols!

Learn about the benefits of Visio’s Developer Mode, how it will help you work more efficiently, and how it will solve some mysteries that you might have encountered with Visio 2007.

In our last article on smart frames, we built a SmartShape that maintained a constant border-thickness, no matter the size of the shape.
It was a fairly simple frame, it got the job done, but it …

UPDATE!
Hey football/soccer fans! We’ve got an update to our automated smart drawing for this years European Cup soccer tournament.
Perhaps you are familiar with the first version, which can be found here: European Cup 2008 …

Learn how to parameterize your Visio SmartShapes by using ShapeSheet formulas to control Geometry. In this first article in a series, you’ll build a frame shape which maintains a constant border-thickness when the shape is resized!

Learn how to add smarts to your Visio SmartShapes–and have fun doing it–by looking at mischievous examples of badly behaved, not-so-smart shapes!

Visio is a natural choice for creating brackets for sports tournaments.
I have seen many elimination-tournament diagrams created in Visio over the years. In fact, just a few years ago, a very nice example was done …

If you’ve ever drawn arcs in Visio, then grouped them together, you may have noticed that they behave oddly when you resize the group. In this article, we’ll explain why this happens and how to fix it. You’ll also learn about the two shape interaction styles that Visio shapes have: 1D and 2D shapes!

Visio has tons of keyboard shortcuts, including modifiers for constraining the resizing and moving of shapes. For instance, with the Shift key depressed, you can constrain a shape to move only vertically or horizontally. Neat-o!
But …

There are many ways to view or change the size of your Visio shapes. In this article, you’ll learn about a whole slew of methods to do this!

Recently we were introduced to the Cisco IP Telephone Shapes, and learned how they could be improved in the article: Making Shapes More Efficient: Using Fewer Shapes & Groups.
Today we’re going to focus on what …

Learn how to make your Visio shapes more efficient by reducing the number of sub-shapes and nested-group levels.

Learn how to apply four colors to a single shape, make use of advanced gradient and transparency techniques, and download a shape that does it all!

Getting text on a circle in Visio was always a pain until the Circular Text Generator (version 1) appeared on Visio Guy. V1 was evidently a big hit, but you wanted more! Version 2 adds …