Here’s what I do if I want to create a simple but good-lookin’ Visio flowchart FAST. I’ve marked formatting steps as [OPTIONAL] since they aren’t required to put together the flowchart itself. 1) Finding the stencil: Open the Business Process | Basic Flowchart Shapes stencil 2) Finding the shape: Drag the shape that is called…
Year: 2004
Visio SP 1 Administrator Install Questions
I heard in email from a blog user asking: 1) How best to determine what SP is installed? 2) How to determine the path to where the app is installed (is there a reg key separate from the office key)? Sounded like a pretty common question that IT admins might have so I wanted…
Visual Effects — Soft Shadows on Rectangles and Circles
I have a Program Manager on my team named Matt who is a whiz at extracting cool effects from existing Visio functionality. One of the things that he’s discovered is the ability to combine Visio’s gradient support and shadow support to create a soft shadow for squares, rectangles, and circles. Soft shadows give a professional…
Dev Luv: Visio and .NET Development
Visio, like the other apps in Office, is a COM application. Ergo, it has COM interfaces and needs a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) to work with .NET applications. A pretty decent percentage of our current dev community uses .NET to build custom Visio apps. I’ve got a two-year old son who takes soccer for…
Sample Images of a Visio Soft Fade Shape Applied
In an earlier blog, I talked about how to create a soft fade shape that adds a subtle yet very neat effect to a drawing. Using the soft shade I created, here’s how it affects different types of drawings. I think it works best with timelines, but you can try it on other drawings types…
Sample Images of Visio Color Schemes for Drawings
I just got my file download site set up so that I can post images of stuff that I talk about. Color schemes, as I was blogging earlier, are the easiest way to improve the appearance of your drawing. Color schemes are not treated equally in all drawing types. For example, they don’t even appear…
How do you use Visio?
I’d love to hear about the context in which you use drawings — whether you’re an end user of the app or a developer of custom solutions for the app. Want to post feedback and talk about how you use Visio? Me, I use Visio a lot. Here’s some things that I do with Visio as…
Dev Luv: Top Ten Things to Know When Using the Visio 2003 ActiveX Control
I have to say, I love the Visio ActiveX control. I think it is so cool to be able to make Visio functionality work in the context of your application user interface, rather than have your application conform to the context of the Visio user interface. Especially considering how much heavy lifting goes into the layout…
Visio 2003 SP 1
SP1 for Visio 2003 is available for download at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AFCA0578-E1FB-4540-B0CC-FF83DEF61CC6&displaylang=en. Install it. Among other things, it fixes printer problems that you might not know you have until right before the meeting that requires handouts. For example, if you plan to print in Landscape orientation to a Hewlett Packard CP 1700 printer, your document is only going…
Dev Luv: Visio Development Top Five Performance Tips
Here are my favorite five recommendations for improving Visio performance in an app: Get a Cell by its location rather than its name: Retrieve a cell by its Section, Row, and Cell location in the ShapeSheet using CellsSRC, rather than by Cell name. It also means that you’re more globalization-friendly (unless you’re using CellsU) since cell names…