1980 witnessed the launch of the classic arcade game Battlezone by Atari.

In 2007, Microsoft launched Visio 2007, which included the new Themes feature.

For 28 years, the two have been on a collision course with destiny...linked by computers, the Geek Factor...and Fate.

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If you are an Exchange administrator, you might have worked with Exchange Management tools. And while you might enjoy the power and flexibility of these tools, you might be missing the ability to get a graphical overview of user mailbox details.

Now, I'm not an Exchange administrator, but I get the feeling that this thing is probably pretty cool for those of you who are...

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Attention process engineers!

Calling all techies who work in:

- Oil refineries
- Water treatment facilities
- Any plant that produces a product in liquid form!

For years one of Japan’s top Visio experts, Junichi Yoda, has offered his 3D Isometric Piping shapes to download for free. I’ve long loved these shapes (having studied mechanical engineering myself), and have put off far showcasing them on Visio Guy for far, far too long!

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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 Auto-Updating Diagram

Well, that version needed a few updates, most notably, the handling of games that are resolved with penalty-kicks, or shoot-outs.

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Wapperdude submitted this "mike" shape to Visio Guy, for us to pass on to our readers.

According to WD, the inspiration came as follows: I saw a request for audio symbols in the Visio forum, had this dumb 1998 mike shape, sent it to school and now it's smarter.

So for you A/V folks out there in Visio Land, here's a new SmartShape for your diagramming enjoyment!

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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...

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Judging from the view-counter and download stats for our post: Free Visio People Shapes, people just love free people shapes!

Well let the love-fest continue!

We recently stumbled upon a Visio page from <Low Zorro Voice> El Visioso </Low Zorro Voice> and found a keeper that we'd like to share with you!

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Well Visio Fans, June is upon us, the weather is hot, and the UEFA European Cup 2008 is about to start!

Europe is going soccer crazy, and signs of Fußball-mania are everywhere! As I walk around Vienna, it's pretty hard not to notice these waving from store-fronts and car windows.

Of course Visio Guy wanted to get in on the football action, so we've drummed up some rabble-rousing, chest-pounding Visio shapes to fan the flames of nationalistic fervor!

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For quite some time now, I've wanted to create a Visio SmartShape of a proper, oval, comic-style Word Balloon shape.

But calculating the intersection of a triangular callout with the perimeter of an ellipse was too foreboding...

...UNTIL NOW!

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Whether you are looking to conserve energy, optimize your hardware usage, or rapidly test a wide variety of software configurations, some sort of virtualization is surely in your future.

And if you are a Visio Guy or a Visio Gal, you'll surely want to make a diagram to better see how your network's hardware is set up.

I've been hopping around the net looking for (mostly-free) Visio-related resources for virtualization. Here's what I found...

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We've been messing around with our Sankey Diagram Shapes for Visio again--because we just couldn't resist!

In the download-able Visio file, you'll find a set of five Sankey arrows pre-wired to a process box.

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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...

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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 unless I have totally missed something (which does occur occasionally), there is one feature that Visio could really use: the ability to resize shapes on-center.

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Welcome to this month's issue of Pimp My Visio Shapes! (*cough*)

I've come up with some shapes that will allow you to add lighting effects such as lens flares, star-highlights, and other shininess-enhancing effects to your overdrawn Visio diagrams.

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David Parker, of bVisual Ltd, has created a really cool map of the UK's counties and boroughs, and released it for download. Have a look at the article here: UK Counties and Boroughs Map Shapes for Visio.

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One of our Visio Guy readers recently sent us some very well-drawn shapes for Cisco IP Telephone buttons. Let's all send a warm thank you very much to Art Braune for adding to the quality and usefulness of this site!

Art told me he would send me a blurb, describing how he uses the shapes, but I thought I'd take a guess. After quickly Google-ing for Cisco IP Telephone, but without reading too much, I surmised that this thing is highly customizable. So it would make sense that IT departments would want to document how they had modified the phone, then send out a quick-reference card (or booklet) to company employees.

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Well, it's been a while since we offered an overdrawn Visio Network shape, like the Logitech VX Revolution Mouse Shape, the Thinkpad Network Shape. or the USB Stick Shape.

Since it's Easter Sunday, and things are slow around here, I was in the mood to create something pretty. And of all the new gadgets on the market, few are prettier than the sensational Apple iPhone and the Apple iPod Touch.

So for you Apple fans who still use PCs, and for you die-hard Windows fans who appreciate a bit of sarcasm, please enjoy the Apple iPhone Visio Network Shape.

<haha> And NO, there won't be a Mac Version of this shape... </haha>

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Today we’re going create a glass effect, using basic end-user features of Visio.

With a few simple techniques, you’ll be able to add pizzazz to your elevation drawings of windows, cabinetry, video monitors, rack-systems.

Now, maybe you’re thinking; Visio is not Adobe Illustrator, and Visio diagrams are supposed to be simple, boring, and utilitarian. A quick glance at this site might bring you to question that notion.

But don’t just take our word for it…

Update: You can now download a Visio drawing with samples shapes at the end of this article

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The easy answer to this questions is: two. A single-shape can have two colors in its fill: a Fill Color and a Pattern Color.

If you want more, you have to group separate, differently-colored shapes together. In fact getting more colors is one of the major reasons that shapes become groups in the first place.

But if two were the actual answer, well, this article would over.

You see, Visio-Guy-friend Saveen Reddy has been up to his usual tricks of pushing Visio beyond the obvious and into the intriguing...

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If you have a need to create repeating graphical elements, then learning how to create custom line patterns in Visio is absolutely essential.

Visio custom line patterns offer a power and flexibility that will save time for both your end-users and your solution development effort. And your final product will have a refined and elegant look.

Recently, John Goldsmith of Visual Signals, UK posted two excellent articles about creating custom line patterns in Visio.

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The Geographic Map Shapes & Drawings are an extremely popular feature of this web-site. And since a lot of our readers speak German, or come from Germany, it seemed like this post was long overdue.

So today we present a map of Germany and it's states--the Bundesländer--as they are called in German.

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David Edson of long-time Visio fame, and currently of Visibility.biz, recently sent us a high-quality Visio rendition of the Periodic Table to share with you.

You'll want to note that this download is more than just a static diagram! You can use it as an interactive reference, because each SmartShape contains extra information about each chemical element. And you can even right-click each element to link to the Wikipedia entry about each substance!

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I found some blog posts about pixel rulers for Visio. It seems that folks wanted to dimension their Visio shapes in pixels, which Visio doesn't technically support by default.

But for folks who use Visio to do web-layout wireframes, information architecture and storyboarding, pixel-dimensioning is a useful thing to be able to do!

An earlier article on Visio Guy served up the Rack Unit Dimension Line, which can actually be configured to measure shapes in terms of pixels. But to save time, I've modified that shape and offered it here, for your pixel-dimensioning enjoyment.

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Evidently, lots of designers are using Visio to layout pages. As you dig around on the web, you'll bump into terms such as IA, Information Architecture, Storyboarding, and Wireframes. These all have to do with designing the look and feel of web pages or other documents.

If you're doing any sort of page-layout design, you might be interested in quickly creating paragraphs and sections of dummy text that you can format according to the page's style characteristics. So I thought it would be neat to design a Visio SmartShape that automatically repeats a chunk of text over and over, to speed up the process of laying out a page.

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Edit: the is Microsoft Office Visio Conference 2008 over, so this won't be super-interesting any more : )

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Recently, Matt R asked about a Visio Bingo Template for his marketing team. I thought to myself, "Now there's a mission-critical application of Visio!"

Well actually, it was a ShapeSheet challenge. I wanted to make a card that allowed the user to randomly update the numbers, but without using any code.

The resulting bingo card shape is implemented entirely using the ShapeSheet. There's no VBA code behind the number generation, so you don't have to worry about any VBA Macro Security issues.

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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 some more control over text spacing and placement on the circle. So if you need to place Visio text on a circle, read on!

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A Sankey diagram is an interesting visualization that uses the thickness of arrows to depict the flow-volumes in a system. The thicker the arrow, the more flow of energy, mass, or volume. Sankey graphics are easily read and quickly comprehended.

In this article, we'll explore the creation of Sankey diagrams using Visio, and we'll offer our own free Visio Sankey diagramming shapes for your downloading and diagramming pleasure!

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Today's post, like the Visio Guy web-site, is all about creating smart graphics.

We're going to create an evergreen tree shape that fades as its size decreases. With this one single SmartShape you'll be able to illustrate an entire forest-scene that fades into the mist. And you won't have to format each tree individually.

You will learn how to cut Visio shapes into pieces and union the bits together to form new shapes. You'll learn how to add parameters to shapes, and fill them with Excel-like ShapeSheet formulas create sophisticated graphical behavior. And you'll create a context menu that resets the shape with a click of the mouse.

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Gina recently asked; "Is it possible to use Visio to create technical fashion drawings? Are there templates and stencils available? Has this been done before?"

I haven't heard of any company that creates a Visio-based solution for the fashion industry, and I wasn't able to find any shapes from enthusiasts posted on the net. But I can say this; "It has been done before."

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Visio network shapes have gone "3D", but Visio connectors have decidedly not...

...unless you're the guys behind the creation of the Zeus ZXTM Appliance Network Stencil. Several readers have noticed the cool isometric connectors that the KnowledgeHub guys used in their sample illustration, and want to get 'hold of 'em.

We're not sure where the KH folks got those connectors, but a little light bulb went * bing * inside our Visio Guy heads as we remembered yet another an unfinished prototype gathering dust on our HD. Ah yes, Oblique Connector.vsd, from long, long ago...

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It's snowing here in Liezen, Austria and I don't have proper winter clothing with me. So I thought I'd take advantage of this indoor time and finish up another over-drawn network shape and offer it to you, the Visio Guy Public.

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OK, we've just about had enough! Between all the newsgroup posts, and John Marshall's nagging, it's time to do something about adding text to a circle in Visio. 'Til now, the standard response has been; "insert a Word Art object". But with Visio's SmartShape- and automation capabilities that just won't do! We ought to be able to build something cool--and more native to Visio. This article presents the first in a series of the Circular Text Generator! Read the rest of this entry »

Back in October 2006, Visio Guy posted the Circular Multi-arrow Shapes that offer superior capabilities to the popular in-the-Visio-box version.

Well, David Van Hemel had already created a similar, flexible solution for PowerPoint users. Although he was happy to find our Visio-based offering, he thought that his PowerPoint tool would be useful to others, and he generously offered his solution for consumption by the smart-graphics-loving community.

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Peter O'Brien, who writes the SOA Station: Mind the Gap! blog has created a Visio stencil for making Service Component Architecture drawings. You can download it from his post on the subject: SCA Diagram Stencil for Visio
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Multi-shape capability is one of the qualities that make Visio SmartShapes something special. A single shape can alter its appearance at the click of a context-menu, or the change of a data value.

While Visio shapes are often vector based, you can also create Visio multi-shapes using images. Using the simple panning-and-cropping technique described in this article will help you to quickly build efficient image-based Visio multi-shapes! So if you have a set of icons just aching to become a SmartShape, read on!

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You may have noticed cool-looking, shiny ball shapes that pop-up now and again on Visio Guy. They have an attractive offset-radial fill effect, like the balls in the image on the left.

If you've played with Visio's Fill Format dialog, you'll know that good ol' Fill Pattern Number 40 will give you a nice-looking radial fill, but there doesn't seem to be a setting for getting it to be off-center. Well (once again) Visio Guy is here to show you how to work some black magic!

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A recent Visio newsgroup post asked about customizing the output files from Visio's Save As Web feature. This rang a bell in the ol' noggin, and I went searching for an old demo that exported a customized html page, with pop-up menus that displayed Custom Property (Shape Data) information.

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If you are using Microsoft Forefront Client Security, and are documenting it in your Visio network diagrams, or if you dig Visio's new Data Graphics features, or simply like brightly-colored, shiny new Visio shapes and then we've got an article and a download for you!

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Whether you are a developer creating a Visio-based solution, or are a competent Visio user, David Parker’s excellent offering will help you push Visio 2007 to new limits!

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