If you are developing solutions for Visio, then you’ve probably dabbled with VB code in Visio’s Visual Basic for Applications editor. If you’ve been in the industry as long as I have, then you know that VB means Visual Basic. Period. End of story. But if you happen to also be from Australia, then it’s a different story…
Shapes
Multi-Earth Shape
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!
Sales Force Automation With Visio
One of the areas in which Visio particularly shines is that of Sales Force Automation. With Visio, a rep can sit on-site with a customer, and visually spec out a system or an installation. The components in the Visio schematic can be linked to real product-data, and can be analyzed via code to generate bills-of-material and reports automatically.
On MSDN, I recently uncovered “oldie but goody” demo that shows off these capabilities. I created it for Visio 5.0, while I still worked for Visio Corp, and it still works with Visio 2003! The demo illustrates how a fictitious candy-manufacturing line might be laid out. Custom shapes represent general classes of equipment, and database links behind the shapes specify real-world items. With the click of a button, a Bill of Materials, is generated in an embedded Excel spreadsheet, sitting right on the page!
Free Visio People Shapes
Do you need people shapes to spruce up those Org-charts, workflow diagrams, or marketing slides? Are you tired of Visio’s outdated or distracting-and-overly-3D shapes? Then you’ve come to the right place!
Today Visio Guy offers its own version of the The Human Form. A subtly shaded, Fisher-Price-looking, person-pawn for your downloading pleasure. And of course, they have a few extra smart features just to sweeten the deal…
12 Month Data Graphic Shape (almost)
This morning I was thumbing through one of Edward R. Tufte’s books, and I got this idea for a “12-month bar shape” — a shape that shows vertical bars for each month of the year, in a compact, easy-to-read format. My original thought was that it would make a perfect Visio 2007 Data Graphic!
So, without thinking, planning, or researching, I plunged ahead creating the details of the shape, and then realized that making a Data Graphic is more complicated than I thought. Ugh!
Nevertheless, I’ve created a shape, which displays bar-graphics for 12 months of the year, and which links to external data. Perhaps you’ll find it useful!
Map of World
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.
Rack Unit Dimension Line
Many many years ago, when I worked at Visio Corporation, one of my projects was to create the dimension line shapes that you can still find to this day under File > Shapes > Visio Extras > Dimensioning – Architectural or Engineering.
After all the sweat and tears that went in to creating them, I came to affectionately call them: My Babies. In fact, I still claim them as dependants every April 15th, and will soon be searching for a suitable university for them to attend.
So when a forum question appears regarding Visio’s dimension lines, I’m naturally all ears. Recently, someone made an inquiry in the Visio general newsgroup about a dimension line that could display Rack Units…
Wave Generator Diagram
Well folks, the Missus and I have been traveling New Zealand’s south island for the past few weeks, and I’ve finally found the time get online and offer up a new post.
The land is beautiful down here, and folks are very conscious of the environment. In the news, there’s been lots of talk about generating power using the energy stored in ocean’s waves and tidal flows. On the long train ride from Auckland to Wellington, I had a conversation with a guy about a simple power generator that works by anchoring a buoy to the ocean floor, and using the up-and-down motion caused by floating to generate electricity.
I had the idea to create a Visio diagram to illustrate how such a wave generator might work. [Read more…] about Wave Generator Diagram
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Stencil
Microsoft has published a brand-spanking-new set of Visio shapes for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. You can download the stencil for free from Microsoft’s web-site and immediately get to work planning your next Exchange deployment. You’ll also amaze your co-workers with your unmatched graphic-abilities and non-boring PowerPoint slides!
Zeus ZXTM Appliance Network Stencil
Zeus Technology produces software and hardware for advanced traffic management and application acceleration. If you’re working with Zeus’ products, you’ll probably want to map out your system from time to time.