Year: 2004

Visio Books and Resources

If you’re new to Visio, check out the Step-by-Step with Visio 2003 book. It provides an introduction to the product and comes with a CD with exercises. If you’re somewhat familiar with Visio but interested in getting more out of the product, the Visio 2003 Inside Out book is pretty good. It’s targeted at the…

Dev Luv: New blog on Visio solution development!

Chris Castillo, Visio’s Application Development Consultant and .NET developer extraordinaire, has started a blog on Visio solution development with a focus on .NET development: http://blogs.msdn.com/chcast.   Check it out! It’s 100%-focused on developer issues for Visio. Chris knows a ton about Visio solution development and has lots of experience with standalone Visio solution as well…

Dev Luv: Storing Custom XML in Visio XML File Format

The Visio XML file format, as discussed earlier, is a physical file format with all the information that Visio needs to render the diagram with the same fidelity as the binary file format. Let’s consider the case in which a developer wants to use the data stored in shapes in a Visio business process diagram….

Getting back to blog commentors…

Just a reminder: If you post a comment to me through the blog’s Contact form, remember to put your email! I’ve gotten comments from folks who ask a question that I’d like to respond to, but the poster forgets to provide their email or gives a wrong address. I’m always happy to hear from Visio…

Summary Reporting on Shape Properties in a Visio Diagram

Visio shapes often host properties in which users add details about the shape. For example, a network server shape in Visio 2003 lets you store IP address, server location, MAC address, and other information about the server. (You can access Shape Properties for a shape by right-clicking on the shape, and selecting the Properties entry.) An…

Dev Luv: Transforming Visio’s XML File Format

As I mentioned in my last blog on the Visio XML file format, Visio documents can be saved into a native XML Visio file format (.VDX) or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). The Visio XML file format is not a W3C standard. SVG, which is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML,…

Dev Luv: Visio’s XML File Format

Visio has a native XML file format for a Visio drawing, a Visio template, and a Visio stencil. We do not have the ability to save a Visio drawing into any other XML schema but our own (and SVG, if you are using Visio 2003). If users want Visio diagrams in BPEL or some other business…

Visio Network Diagrams on the Pocket PC

I just heard about a nifty little application that iAdmin Mobile makes to let users view Visio diagrams on the PocketPC. It’s targeted at network administrators who want to browse Visio network diagrams on the go. Here’s what it might look like on the PocketPC:     Obviously, the PocketPC is not the right forum…

Automatically Setting Shape Color By Data Values In Visio Diagrams

Visio has a way to let you automatically color shapes by the values in the shape’s custom properties. Consider the case of an organization chart. By default, there are a number of custom properties on an organization chart shape, such as Name, Title, Email.   You can view custom properties on a shape by right-clicking…