OK, we’ve just about had enough! Between all the newsgroup posts, and John Marshall’s nagging, it’s time to do something about adding text to a circle in Visio. ‘Til now, the standard response has been; “insert a Word Art object”. But with Visio’s SmartShape- and automation capabilities that just won’t do! We ought to be able to build something cool–and more native to Visio. This article presents the first in a series of the Circular Text Generator! [Read more…] about Circular Text Generator (version 1)
Shapes
Circular Multi-arrows in PowerPoint
Back in October 2006, Visio Guy posted the Circular Multi-arrow Shapes that offer superior capabilities to the popular in-the-Visio-box version.
Well, David Van Hemel had already created a similar, flexible solution for PowerPoint users. Although he was happy to find our Visio-based offering, he thought that his PowerPoint tool would be useful to others, and he generously offered his solution for consumption by the smart-graphics-loving community.
Service Component Architecture (SCA) Stencil
Peter O’Brien, who writes the SOA Station: Mind the Gap! blog has created a Visio stencil for making Service Component Architecture drawings. You can download it from his post on the subject: SCA Diagram Stencil for Visio
[Read more…] about Service Component Architecture (SCA) Stencil
Visio Film Strip Shapes: Hurray for Hollywood!
Multi-shape capability is one of the qualities that make Visio SmartShapes something special. A single shape can alter its appearance at the click of a context-menu, or the change of a data value.
While Visio shapes are often vector based, you can also create Visio multi-shapes using images. Using the simple panning-and-cropping technique described in this article will help you to quickly build efficient image-based Visio multi-shapes! So if you have a set of icons just aching to become a SmartShape, read on!
[Read more…] about Visio Film Strip Shapes: Hurray for Hollywood!
Off-center Radial Fill Effect
You may have noticed cool-looking, shiny ball shapes that pop-up now and again on Visio Guy. They have an attractive offset-radial fill effect, like the balls in the image on the left.
If you’ve played with Visio’s Fill Format dialog, you’ll know that good ol’ Fill Pattern Number 40 will give you a nice-looking radial fill, but there doesn’t seem to be a setting for getting it to be off-center. Well (once again) Visio Guy is here to show you how to work some black magic!
Customized Visio HTML Export
A recent Visio newsgroup post asked about customizing the output files from Visio’s Save As Web feature. This rang a bell in the ol’ noggin, and I went searching for an old demo that exported a customized html page, with pop-up menus that displayed Custom Property (Shape Data) information.
Forefront Icons and Data Graphic Shapes
If you are using Microsoft Forefront Client Security, and are documenting it in your Visio network diagrams, or if you dig Visio’s new Data Graphics features, or simply like brightly-colored, shiny new Visio shapes and then we’ve got an article and a download for you!
Book Review: Visualizing Information with Microsoft Office Visio 2007
Whether you are a developer creating a Visio-based solution, or are a competent Visio user, David Parker’s excellent offering will help you push Visio 2007 to new limits!
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3D Extruded Map of USA
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 more…] about 3D Extruded Map of USA
Map Distance Dimension Line
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 more…] about Map Distance Dimension Line