If you’ve ever needed to constrain a Viso SmartShape’s control handle to a circle or other curve, then you’ve finally found the right article!
Formulas
List Separators in Visio’s ShapeSheet are Crazy!
Are you developing Visio solutions that will be used across the Globe? Have you experienced strange behavior using ShapeSheet functions like INDEX, LOOKUP, SUM, RGB or others that involve lists of items?
If so, then you, my friend, are a victim of list-separator craziness!
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Choose Colors with Shape Data Fields
Do you have shapes that contain multiple colors that you’d like to easily change?
Wouldn’t it be neat to be able to specify those colors in Shape Data fields, along with other parameters for the shape?
Visio’s Shape Data fields don’t directly support colors, but I’ve come up with a workaround. You can read how I did it, or just get the download and re-use what I’ve already built!
Trilogy-meter Data Graphics Part I
Today, Visio Guy will show you how to create a three-bar SmartShape and link it to data using Visio 2007 Professional’s brilliant “Link Data to Shapes” feature.
We’ll cover the intricacies of creating a shape that visually reacts to data, and show you how to link instances of this shape to actual rows of data in an Excel spreadsheet!
This is the first in a three-part series on data graphics and data linking, so read-on, and stay tuned!
A Re-programmable Visio Multi-shape: The Configurable Stickman!
If you’ve read our last article, Visio Multi-shapes, then you know what a great feature multi-shape-ness can be.
However, until you graduate from Visio Geek University (go VGU!), and become proficient with ShapeSheets, those pesky multi-shapes can be quite difficult to build.
So what if user’s could somehow define their own multi-shapes?
That question has burned today’s article into my mind, and today it comes to you via the information super-highway. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce to you the Configurable Stickman, which who can be set to one of five positions.
And YOU can define the positions yourself!
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A SmartShape is Worth 1000 Symbols
The promise of the Visio SmartShape is that one single shape can replace an entire army of symbols.
With a little bit of parameterization, we can clear out the redundancy in our symbol libraries, thereby simplifying maintenance for our developers, and ease-of-use for our customers.
Today’s article will demonstrate just how Visio SmartShapes can do that, and we’ll teach you how to conjure up some of the behind-the-scenes magic that makes it happen!
How to Build Smart Frames and Bezels #2
In our last article on smart frames, we built a SmartShape that maintained a constant border-thickness, no matter the size of the shape.
It was a fairly simple frame, it got the job done, but it had a uniform frame-thickness all the way around, and offered no way for an end-user to change that thickness.
In this article, we’ll add some flexibility to the shape by making separate margin parameters for each side. We’ll also expose the margin settings to the user via Shape Data fields.
Visio Microphone Shape
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!
How to Build Smart Frames and Bezels #1
If you create elevation drawings for rack systems, for cabinetry, for A/V systems with TVs and video monitors, or for walls with doors and windows, you’ll find yourself needing frame shapes.
And while your equipment may come in different sizes, the frames should maintain consistency when they are stretched.
For example, you may have several sizes of monitor: 19-inch, 21-inch, 48-inch, etc. Even though the picture gets bigger, the bezel around the display stays the same thickness. You get more display area, not more plastic!
A Visio SmartShape offers an elegant way to depict these objects. With a little bit of ShapeSheet programming, you can make one shape that can do the job of several!
We’ll call these shapes Smart Frames. This article is the first installment in a series about creating and understanding Smart Frame shapes in Visio! So enjoy this article and stay tuned in the future!
Punish Your Users with (not so) SmartShapes That Misbehave
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…
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