One of the things I love about Visio is smart shapes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Visio shapes that are not smart. Including a number of shape collections from Microsoft that are just basic shapes. This is not the Visio team’s fault because Microsoft is a large company and not everyone really understands whatContinue reading “Who Messed up my bed?”
Category Archives: Visio
Visio 2016 Electrical Engineering Shapes
While researching a new PowerPoint deck on Visio 2016, I came across a supposed update to the Electrical Engineering stencil. Unfortunately, the way I learned how to draw EE shapes, long before Visio existed when I was getting my EE degree, was what was in Visio 2013. The bold lines in 2016 are distracting andContinue reading “Visio 2016 Electrical Engineering Shapes”
Friendly Visio Stencil
I am working with a stencil that contains almost 400 shapes and it is far from friendly. Normally a new stencil will show the icon for the shape and its’ name. With this project, the name is far from helpful. Undecypherable is more appropriate. If you right click the band at the top of theContinue reading “Friendly Visio Stencil”
Visio – Making a point
Visio does have a tool for adding Connection points, but it does not have a tool for nudging that point if you missed the first time or decided at a later date you anted it elsewhere. Normally, Visio Connection points are simple, middle of the shape, one of the corners or the center of oneContinue reading “Visio – Making a point”
Open Shape Surgery for the Visio Developer
One of the first gotchas for new Visio developers is the UnGroup command. Visio shapes are simple, they can have one colour and one line type. To make a traffic light, you need to group a red circle, yellow circle and a green circle. When grouped, Visio will take a collection of shapes and createContinue reading “Open Shape Surgery for the Visio Developer”
Taming Geometry Sections in Visio
Ever create a pair of shapes in Visio, butted them together and do a Union operations and find that the joining line between the shapes does not disappear and find that the new shape has two geometry sections? So, before you start to copy rows from one section to the other, place a rectangle shapeContinue reading “Taming Geometry Sections in Visio”
Dual Outlets
The VBA code to stack shapes was used to create a series of shapes that represented inserts into the cap of a bottle that allowed hoses to be connected. For the single connections, the shapes making up the stack were horizontally symmetrical, so after stacking the shapes it was a simple matter of aligning allContinue reading “Dual Outlets”
Are Visio Shapes Stacked against you?
Recently I have been working on some Visio shapes that were basically a stack of rectangles. Though Visio has tools for aligning and distributing shapes, it does not have an easy way of stacking shapes. If you are lucky enough to have shapes that are multiples of the grid size, it is a piece ofContinue reading “Are Visio Shapes Stacked against you?”
Future of Visio?
Visio was introduced 28 years ago and has unfortunately become complacent. The Visio wannabees have become established and use half-truths to promote their products. What was Visio’s last oh wow feature, something to make the market pay attention? In its’ life time, most under the Microsoft brand, Visio has come out with some interesting innovations,Continue reading “Future of Visio?”
Bevel* cells in the Visio shapesheet?
Recently I was exploring the new Visio 2013 shapesheet and came across a series of cells starting with Bevel*. Thanks to Jim Sun on the Visio team, I received the following answer: The cells in the Bevel Properties row are grouped into 6 concepts: Top bevel (BevelTopType, BevelTopWidth, BevelTopHeight) Bottom bevel (BevelBottomType, BevelBottomWidth, BevelBottomHeight) DepthContinue reading “Bevel* cells in the Visio shapesheet?”
john Visio MVP 