Smart graphics for visual people
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!
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!
[Read more…] about A Re-programmable Visio Multi-shape: The Configurable Stickman!
Visio has tons of keyboard shortcuts, including modifiers for constraining the resizing and moving of shapes. For instance, with the Shift key depressed, you can constrain a shape to move only vertically or horizontally. Neat-o!
But unless I have totally missed something (which does occur occasionally), there is one feature that Visio could really use: the ability to resize shapes on-center.
A common question from budding Visio SmartShape developers is: “How do I get my text to resize with the shape?” Well, there are a few typical responses to that question, but this article focuses on a very simple method that you can use for text that does not change. So if you’re building shapes with company logos, digital readouts, or something similar, then read on!
We see quite often in Visio’s newsgroups the question; “how do I get my font size to change with the size of my shape?” We’ll tackle that issue with some nifty ShapeSheet formulas, and a bit of philosophizing. So pull up a chair and a warm cup of coffee…
An associate asked me the other day; “how do you add a number of months to a date?”
I thought this would be simple, because the ShapeSheet supports elapsed-time units in addition to date and time formats.
With elapsed-time, you can manipulate quantities of time, so the problem seemed fairly easy.
Well, not exactly… [Read more…] about Month Math
Happy New Year 2007 Visio Fans!
Not only does the new year bring hope, rebirth, and a chance to start anew, but also a new version of Visio. Yes folks, Visio 2007 will soon be on the shelves, and beneath the shrink-wrap and behind the registration cards you’ll find an exciting new feature for ShapeSheet developers: the ability to define your own ShapeSheet functions!
By defining your own functions, you can really reduce the clutter and repeated effort that can occur with complicated ShapeSheet functions.
[Read more…] about User-defined ShapeSheet Functions in Visio 2007
Cori who writes the blog Elliptical… wrote this nice little piece on constraining a shape’s angle so that it can only be rotated in 90-degree increments. I thought I’d relay the information to you here, and explain a bit more about the BOUND ShapeSheet function.
Although you can use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+R and Ctrl+L to rotate shapes in 90-degree increments clockwise and counterclockwise, this does nothing to actually constrain the allowable values.
[Read more…] about Constraining Angle with the BOUND ShapeSheet Function
Sometimes your Visio SmartShapes can be like beauty pageant contestants: they just need to look good, but don’t need a lot of intelligence. The creators of Visio realized this (after five versions) and gave us a way to streamline lots of “dumb” vector data. The ShapeSheet function: POLYLINE and the geomettry row: PolyLineTo will help you get the job done.
Ever need a spiral shape? I just found one buried on my hard-drive — something I whipped up years ago, and modified last year. You can download it here.
The download consists of one Visio drawing file (.vsd). This file contains VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) macro-code that generates the spirals. You’ll need to allow this code to run in order to create spirals.