I watched an interesting video about Penrose Patterns on Veritasium’s YouTube page this morning. It inspired me to create this fun Visio diagram!
Geometry
Text Outlines in Visio
If you’ve ever wondered how to convert text to paths or vectors in Visio, then this article is for you–although the solution might not be what you expected!
Visio Squircles
A couple weeks ago, I briefly glanced at my annoying Facebook page and noticed that people were commenting on the “new look”, which I was fortunate enough to not notice.
What did catch my eye was a comment from one friend, who noted; “Hey, the new Facebook has squircles!” Then another replied; “Yes, squircles are so Web 2.0!”
Naturally I was put off by how folks try to Out-clever-two-point-oh each other on Facebook, but I was nonetheless curious about squircles, because they sounded…well…visual!
Understanding Arc-Resize Problems in Visio
If you’ve ever drawn arcs in Visio, then grouped them together with other shapes, you may have noticed that they behave rather oddly on resizing. As you make the group bigger or smaller, the arcs may bow or squish in ways that you didn’t expect.
This problem arises because of the interaction style of the arc shapes, which is 1D. Visio has two interaction styles: 1D and 2D. They have to do with the green handles you see on the shape, and how you go about manipulating the shape with the mouse.
In this article, we’ll describe the difference between the two interaction styles, and explain how to correct resizing problems you might be encountering.
[Read more…] about Understanding Arc-Resize Problems in Visio
SmartShape Tutorial: Fading Trees
Today’s post, like the Visio Guy web-site, is all about creating smart graphics.
We’re going to create an evergreen tree shape that fades as its size decreases. With this one single SmartShape you’ll be able to illustrate an entire forest-scene that fades into the mist. And you won’t have to format each tree individually.
You will learn how to cut Visio shapes into pieces and union the bits together to form new shapes. You’ll learn how to add parameters to shapes, and fill them with Excel-like ShapeSheet formulas create sophisticated graphical behavior. And you’ll create a context menu that resets the shape with a click of the mouse.
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!
Polyline Shape Maker
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.
Polygon Maker
Another question popped up on the newsgroup forums today asking about making polygon shapes in Visio. This triggered a neuron, and I was off like a flash to perform a search of my …\Visio directory.
Sure enough, I found “PolygonMaker 2002.vsd”, which I have prettied-up for presentation to you today…
Smart Chamfer – A Corner That Doesn’t Stretch
ECB asked in a recent newsgroup post:
“How can I make a 45° corner that maintains 45° when the shape resizes?”
Such a shape would be useful, for say, creating a “Document” shape. It’s also the type of thing that the CAD-oriented folks might like to create, only they would call it a “chamfer”.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create such a shape with Visio’s drawing tools, and to add the special behavior using Visio’s ShapeSheet interface.
[Read more…] about Smart Chamfer – A Corner That Doesn’t Stretch
The Hidden World of Visio Shapes
So you’ve created beautiful graphics in Visio, and you know how to add phantasmal ShapeSheet smarts to your shapes, now its time for you to make it all disappear! I often get asked how to toggle the visibility of various elements of Visio drawings, and I usually offer up one of many solutions. But I don’t think that those many solutions have ever been cataloged in a single place. Until, of course, now…