Visio Guy

Whether you're a Visio end-user creating measured drawings, or you're developing a Visio solution with customized Visio shapes, at some point, you'll want to know how big your shapes are, and how to precisely resize them.

There are several ways to do this, and many of them allow you to edit the data as well. Today's post offers a run-down of the many ways that you can edit and view the size of your Visio shapes!

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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 »

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...

Read the rest of this entry »