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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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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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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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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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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So we've had this experimental Visio drawing containing crude attempts at 3D states laying around since 1993. But we only had three states: Washington, Oregon and California. Well after a few years, a few new Visio features, and some wisdom gained, we've finally gotten off our butts and written a little code that helped us produce something a little more useful: an entire map of the USA, where each shape can be extruded into the vertical! Read the rest of this entry »

In this article, we share with you a dimension line SmartShape that can be calibrated to a scale on an imported image, and be subsequently used to measure distances in that space.

Since Visio is adept at importing images in a variety of formats, it can be a great time savings to start with an image as a background or basis for a diagram that you wish to produce. There are many scenarios where the imported art represents a scaled drawing, be it a map, a floor plan, or some other architectural drawing. Read the rest of this entry »

As we travel around the world, we're looking at maps every single day. And being a Visio Guy, this naturally causes ideas to formulate in the old noggin. You may have seen and enjoyed the various map downloads from Visio Guy, but today, we've got something a little bit different.

I hope you'll get a kick out of today's SmartShape: the Multi-Earth Shape. This little bugger lets you choose four views and four color schemes, all with a click of the mouse!

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Well, it's been a while since any map-drawings have found their way to the Visio Guy blog-bits. And, judging by the messages I've been reading in the newsgroups, as well as personally receiving, there are a few more maps that you folks would like to see.

Since Mrs. Visio Guy and I are spending this year traveling around the world, it seemed appropriate that we offer up a map of the world for you to download!

So here we have it: in between hikes through rainforests, sky-diving adventures, and dolphin-watching tours, I've managed to produce a Visio drawing that shows all the countries of the world.

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Nia hao ma and g'day mates! This week, we've got a Map of Asia & Australia for you to download. This complements the Map of North America, Map of Europe, and Map of Central & South America that we've offered you earlier.

(Download map_AsiaAustralia.zip)

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Ola Visio Amigos! Following on the heels of the Map of Europe and the Map of North America, this week brings us a map of South & Central America, that you can download here. Some of the islands of the Carribean are also included.

As usual, the color treatment and text have been added for your convenience!

(Download map_SouthCentralAmerica.zip)

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A few weeks ago, I uploaded the map of Europe Visio diagram. This file provided convenient access to all the shapes of Europe, all neatly arranged relative to one another, living in harmony with peace and unity. Alle Menschen werden Brüder... Today we have the same pain-free (ie: no Shape Search) treatment for North America.

AND, we finally have a short post from the VisioGuy!

(Download map_northamerica.zip)

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Every once in a while, folks ask about map shapes in Visio. Does Visio have countries and continents? Yes? Well, where on earth (pun intended) are they?

Visio has had map shapes for a long time, but it has become increasingly difficult to find them. First, some of the shapes got moved into the shape database. That means they are no longer in a stencil, but must be found by running a Shape Search. And we all know that search can be less than perfect at times.

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