johnvisiomvp

Just cut the RED wire

I have been working on a twisted pair Line Pattern for wires in Visio and I ran into a problem. I wanted to highlight the wires by adding an ouline to it but as it stretched the Fill patterns, there appeared vertical lines every time the pattern repeated. (The horizontal lines in the below imageContinue reading “Just cut the RED wire”

Mea Culpa Graham Wideman

For several decades I have been incorrectly quoting Graham on what I thought was a neat technique with Visio line patterns. It is, but I messed up. When you create Visio Line Patterns, the areas that are black will use the shapes line colour, so if you really want black, you have to use “almostContinue reading “Mea Culpa Graham Wideman”

My Friends think I am Twisted

Recently, fellow Visio MVP Scott Helmers asked me if I had a line pattern that represented twisted pair wires. I mentioned that there was one in the collection of line patterns John GoldSmith talked about in 2008. Unfortunately, the example was a loose pair, so I decided to create my own. If you look atContinue reading “My Friends think I am Twisted”

Time to do the laundry

I am always on the look out for new candidates for Visio. More than a decade ago, I came across a series of symbols for laundry. What intrigued me was the washing shape. It had a series of dots to indicate maximum temperature going from one to six dots. Rather than two rows of three,Continue reading “Time to do the laundry”

What is in a Name?

The standard name for a Visio shape is Sheet.nnnn and most people change it to a more logical name. You can do this with the sub shapes that make up a grouped shape. So, what happens if you decide to revert back to the original Sheet.nnn style? Select the subshape from the Drawing Explorer (OpenContinue reading “What is in a Name?”

Shape Data or Context Menu? Why not both?

In Visio 2010, the Visio team added a Flyout Child cell to the Context menu of a shape. John Goldsmith did a good write up. Visio 2010 custom context menu So, if you are building a Visio shape, you have two ways of controlling how a shape behaves, the context menu or by using ShapeContinue reading “Shape Data or Context Menu? Why not both?”

I need an OED

I have enhanced the Visio stencil shapes so that each shape has custom properties (AKA Shape Data) that is pulled down to the various cells in the shape. I have also updated how the Control Handles that control the width of the cells work. So,I now have a stencil of Visio section shapes that IContinue reading “I need an OED”

Happy 30th Birthday Axon

Last month Axon turned 30. Axon? A few years later they changed their name to ShapeWare and released Visio 1. I have been playing with computers since the mid 60s, basically, most of my life and a lot of that time was spent creating business diagrams. I know it is strange to admit to usingContinue reading “Happy 30th Birthday Axon”

Are there characters in my field or fields in my characters?

As I have said many times, Visio is far more than connected clip art. The shapes can have smarts. Parts of the shape can change by the use of shape data or control handles. It may be the geometry, colour or text. For now, I am going to talk about text. Though there is onlyContinue reading “Are there characters in my field or fields in my characters?”

Connection Strip

There was a recent request in https://visio.uservoice.com/ about Distribute connectors vertically and horizontally and it sounded like an interesting shape to create. It is basically a 1-D shape (a line that is attached to a 2-D shape to add connection points.) The shape has fifteen connection points, but uses Shape Data to make from 1Continue reading “Connection Strip”