Smart graphics for visual people
While Visio is heavily used for flowcharting, network diagramming, org charting and other connected diagramming tasks, it also has a fair amount of capabilities that overlap the CAD arena.
One of the best-kept secrets in this area is the ability to draw tangent lines between two curves.
Today we’re going to expose the secret and show you how to do it!
With the exception of radio personalities, I find like to associate pretty faces with people whose words I read, whose work I use, and whose endeavors I benefit from.
Recently, an interview with Visio expert David Parker was posted on Microsoft TechNet.
In the video, David tells some interesting, relevant stories about his history of working with Visio, and he shares some wise, eloquent words on the power of Visio as a visual tool for corporate desktop users, and as a platform for visual solution developers.
Plus, we get to hear him say; drooring!
Recently in the Visio Guy Newsgroups, user Ziorg77 submitted a wonderful Visio SmartShape of a DIP switch, where you could toggle each of the eight switches individually.
This led to a flurry of discussion, and several more user-submitted versions of the shape.
Each version had a unique interaction style that provided an opportunity for a fascinating comparison of Visio shape behavior and user interaction.
You can see all the shapes in action in a video I’ve prepared, and–even better–you can download these free Visio shapes at the end of this article.
You can learn a lot from bad examples.
Call it learning-from-our-mistakes, anti-patterns, or devilish fun, there’s a lot to be gained by looking at how-not-to-do-it.
Those of us over 30 might remember our first introduction to BASIC programming, taught to us by our friend Jeff, in the electronics corner at the local super market. While Dad was shopping, Jeff went over to the Commodore Vic 20 demo kiosk and typed the following lines:
1 2 | 10 PRINT "Chris is a turkey!" 20 GOTO 10 |
10 PRINT "Chris is a turkey!" 20 GOTO 10
Utterly useless, except for the fact that it forever singed into our memory the ideas of branching and infinite loops…
[Read more…] about Punish Your Users with (not so) SmartShapes That Misbehave
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 for the 2006 World Cup. You can get it at Office Online here: 2006 World Cup Bracket.
But the trouble with these diagrams is that they require *gasp* manual input of data, or user-movement of shapes. The horror!
Well this year, that is all going to change…
[Read more…] about European Cup 2008 Auto-Updating Visio Diagram
Recently, I was digging through some old projects, when I stumbled upon a Visio SmartShape that is loads of fun, and perhaps even slightly useful!
Years ago, I created a demo for one of Microsoft’s marketing groups. One of the shapes is a laser show projection shape and was used in a scaled drawing of a baseball stadium that was to be configured for a software trade show party rock concert.
If you do any kind of system integration, especially stage-layout, event wiring diagrams or something similar, you might find this shape useful. But that’s not the interesting part…