One of the common requests I have seen from Visio users is where do I find a shape for… Today was no different and the request was for a Map of Spain. Unfortunately, Visio Maps was discontinued several years ago and a simple Bing should many results, none that were relevant. Luckily you are not limited to the shapes that came out of the box or were created by others. You can import various graphic formats. The best ones to use are SVG (Scalable ector Graphics) files. So a search of “Map of Spain SVG” provided a good collection of possible candidates. After you import the SVG image, ungroup the shape, this may take a few attempts because the shapes may be nested. Of course, not all SVG shapes can be ungrouped. One good indication if the shape can be ungrouped is if the shape components are coloured.
So within a few minutes I had imported a map of Spain, ungrouped it and had several shapes. In addition to the seperate shapes of the various provinces of Spain there were several shapes for the text that was overlaid on the map.
The end result was a Visio drawing that represented the various provinces of Spain with appropriate labels. There is more than can be done to clean up the drawing, but this is more than adequate for most purposes. You can obtain a copy of the Visio drawing from my download page at http://visio.mvps.org/Downloads/default.html
So if you need more Visio shapes, expand your search to include SVG rather than Visio.
John Marshall… Visio MVP Visio.MVPs.org
john Visio MVP 