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– Visio Shapes & Stencils

Welcome to the Shapes Page!

Here you’ll find links to all shape-related articles on Visio Guy, as well as links to other Visio shape-related resources!

Visio Shapes – General

Visio Shapes – Engineering

Visio Shapes – Hobby

Visio Shapes – Network

Visio Shapes – Plan View

Visio Shapes – SharePoint

Visio Shapes – Wireframes, Website layout, IA

Visio Shapes Articles

  • Drawing-Zentraler Omnibusbahnhof München
    Download and dissect, examine, learn-from, and re-use this Visio re-creation of Munich’s Central Bus Station directory map!
  • AV Engineering Diagrams with Symbol Logic ECAV
    Learn a little bit about two of my customers, the products they provide, and the work I do for them. If you’re in the audio-visual systems business, this might be right up your alley!
  • Visio Radial Grid v3
    Readers have been requesting new features for v2 of the Radial Grid shape, so I’ve created a v3 for your shaping pleasure! More Connection Points! The main thing missing from the last version was connection points on all of the circles. If you’re a fan of the Radial Grid shapes (version 1, or version 2), then you’ll immediately ...
  • Visio Penrose Tile Shapes
    Download this free diagram and build your own Penrose tile arrangements, featuring Visio’s 2D snapping feature!
  • IKEA KALLAX Visio Elevation View Shape
    If you need to plan your next furniture rearrangement, this elevation-view, scaled IKEA KALLAX Visio shape might help you get the job done! We’ve just been looking at changing our living room cabinetry so that we can hide away more bigger things than our trusty old BILLYs are capable of. When it comes to rearranging furniture, Visio ...
  • Moore’s Law Visualization
    I’ve created an interesting visualization of “Moore’s Law” doublings that was inspired by a documentary I saw on YouTube. Read about it, check out the visuals, and download the source Visio file and do whatever you want with it!
  • Draw the Virus with Boolean Operations!
    Learn how to build shapes using Visio’s boolean operations. We’ll join, trim, union and combine simple shapes together to form a quick but effective illustration of a Coronavirus. We’ll move shape pins and change their rotation point, and take a quick dive into the ShapeSheet as well. Finally, we’ll destroy the virus with the fragment ...
  • Salesforce Schema Builder-style ERD Shapes
    Download these free Visio ERD shapes that have the look of Salesforce’s Schemabuilder tool. Based upon Microsoft’s orginal “Crow’s Foot DB Notation” shapes, these shapes have nifty new features that should make them quite useful.
  • Ordered List Shapes
    Quickly build indexed lists of boxes with these convenient “ordered list shapes”. Set a starting index, and a step, and you’re done!
  • Extreme Scales in Visio
    Join me as I STRESS TEST Visio’s drawing scale features and investigate what happens when you try to fit the Solar System on standard office paper!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. This is a fantastic feed. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

    We do a ton of wireframes in Visio and find the UI shapes seriously lacking. Any idea where I can find a set of complete UI shapes?

    – jeff

  2. Jeff,

    I’m working on a Wireframe post, it’s currently in the “drafts” bucket. Check back soon!

    Visio has a nice set of Windows UI shaps built-in. Have a look under Files > Shapes > Software > Windows and Dialogs. At least in Visio Professional, anyway.

    – Chris

  5. I am drawing some workflows for the network. I am looking for a ‘flexible arrow’ which I can make semi transparent to lay over the drawing.

    suggestions?

  6. Hi Robert,

    If you look under File > Shapes > Block Diagram > Blocks, there’s a “Curved Arrow” shape that might be what you’re looking for.

    Or if you need a connector, just right-click on the usual connector and choose “Curved Connector”

    For all shapes, you can set transparency under Format > Fill or Format > Line.

    – Chris

  7. thanks…I am looking for a transparent large line /arrow. I have a drawing that I want to transpose over the drawing indicaitng the flow. I can make the line wider and grey is out, but it does not really solve the issue.

  8. Hey,

    Great information.

    How does one curve text along a shape? Tangent to a circle or along a freeform line?

    Thank you.

    – j

  9. The Flowchart Shapes shape on the Basic Flowchart Shapes stencil (Basic Flowchart Shapes.VSS) is the only flowchart shape that can use right-click change behavior. None of the other flowchart shapes from this stencil have this functionality.

    Do you or others know if there is any information around on how to changing this shape so that it also supports a circle and the Terminator shape?

  11. Hi there,

    I’m looking to build a shape in Visio 2003 that lets me specify a picture as its background and change it on the fly without having to alter or switch fill patterns. Any suggestions?

    — Dan Gudorf

  12. Hi Dan,

    If the images you have aren’t huge, and aren’t great in number, you might consider building a “film strip”, and panning the images inside a cropped window/shape.

    Since images in Visio can be cropped and panned, you can create a film-strip-style image — ie: several images next to each other — and then pan the correct image into view using some ShapeSheet smarts. If this is interesting, let us know, maybe we can get an example posted.

    The new “Icon Sets” in Visio 2007’s Data Graphics use this technique as well. Have a look at Bill Morein’s blog. He’s got a Visio file for download that you might be able to tear apart and learn from.

    – Chris

  13. Hi, quick query. I am using a few cisco shapes on a new visio 2003 document. When i select the shape and change the transparency the shape stays the same and does not get lighter? Can someone please let me know how to do this?

  14. Hi Mark,

    The Cisco shapes you are using might be metafiles wrapped inside of a Visio group shape. I just messed around a bit with metafiles in Visio, and it seems you can’t change the transparency of them, unfortunately.

    – Chris

  15. Hi there,

    My company has asked me to create some wireframe shapes for software mockups. We want to keep the same functionality as the shapes provided by MS – but use our own images. For example, we want to have the slider effect scrollbar, but use our own scrollbar graphic. Is there any way to break apart the MS shapes and add our own graphics?

    If not – how can I attach these functionalities (such as slider, properly sizing window title bars, etc)?

    Thank you so much!
    Amanda

  16. Hi, I created masters from shapes and then edited with standard fill color. When I then create an instance, the color changes in tone or completely. All themes are off, no developer mode, I played with selfdefined colors but it didn’t really help. Any ideas?
    Thanks, Stefan

  17. Hi Stefan,

    The only things I can think of are that 1. The color definitions in your stencil are different than those in your target definition, or 2. your masters use named styles that have different definitions in each document. In this case the masters would switch to the target-document’s style definitions on drop.

    Hope this helps,

    – Chris

  18. hi,

    can any one help me i create an organization chart so is there way to expand the shape in the full screen view by click on shape ??

  19. Hi Noor,

    Do you want to view the whole org-chart in full-screen view, like when you press F5? Or somehow zoom the shape so that it fills the screen?

    – Chris

  20. hi,

    yes i would like the user interaction with the chart when it is in the view mode so during the view mode when the user click on any shape it is expended automatically, so is there a macro code or something can help me???

    Regard’s

  21. I’m looking for a a stencil for 66-block and 110-block as well as any other Telcom shapes, but those two in particular.

  23. I am attempting to create custom shapes to act like the PCs do in the Computers and Monitors Stencils; have the ability to glue the connector to the shape and associate Shape Data to the object. Any quick solutions??

    Thanks,

    Denny

  24. I want Visio shapes for Microsoft Office icons. Do these exist any where or is there a way to import icons into Visio?

  26. Hi Denny,

    Are you creating a network shape yourself? Or is it just a shape that needs connectors and Shape Data?

    You could just alter one of the existing Visio network shapes that you’ve found on the computer and monitor stencil…

    – Chris

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