• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

bVisual

  • Home
  • Services
    • How Visio smartness can help your business
    • Visio visual in Power BI
    • Visio Consulting Services
    • Visio Bureau Services
    • Visio Training and Support Services
  • Products
    • Visio Shape Report Converter
    • SS Plus
    • LayerManager
    • visViewer
    • Metro Icons
    • Rules Tools for Visio
    • The Visio 2010 Sessions App
    • Multi-Language Text for Visio
    • Document Imager for Visio
    • multiSelect for Visio
    • pdSelect for Visio
  • Case Studies
    • Case studies overview
    • Visualizing Construction Project Schedules
    • Visio Online Business Process Mapping
    • Nexans Visio Template
    • CNEE Projects, WorldCom
    • Chase Manhattan Bank
  • News
    • Recent news
    • News archive
  • Resources
    • Articles➡
      • ShapeSheet Functions A-Z
      • Comparing Visio for the Web and Desktop
      • Customising Visio Shapes for the Web App
      • Key differences between the Visio desktop and web apps
      • Using the Visio Data Visualizer in Excel
      • Using Visio in Teams
      • Creating Visio Tabs and Apps for Teams with SharePoint Framework (SPFx)
      • Designing Power Automate Flows with Microsoft Visio
      • Innovative uses of Visio Lists
    • Webcasts ➡
      • Visio in Organizations
      • My session and other Visio sessions at MSIgnite 2019
      • Power up your Visio diagrams
      • Vision up your Visio diagrams
      • The Visio 2010 MVP Sessions
    • Visio Web Learning Resources
    • Books➡
      • Mastering Data Visualization with Microsoft Visio
      • Microsoft Visio Business Process Diagramming and Validation
      • Visualizing Information with Microsoft Visio
  • Blog
    • Browse blog articles
    • Visio Power BI articles
    • Visio for Web articles
    • A history of messaging and encryption
  • About us
    • About bVisual
    • Testimonials
    • Bio of David Parker
    • Contact Us
    • Website Privacy Policy
    • Website terms and conditions
    • Ariba Network
You are here: Home / Visio / Visio 2010 / Visio 2010 Strengths and Weaknesses

Published on June 7, 2011 by David Parker

Visio 2010 Strengths and Weaknesses

My fellow Visio MVP, Chris Roth, and I have recently been interviewed by the renowned online magazine, The Register. You can read some of our thoughts at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/28/visualisation_visio_strengths_weaknesses/.

Related

Filed Under: MVP, Visio 2010

About David Parker

David Parker has 25 years' experience of providing data visualization solutions to companies around the globe. He is a Microsoft MVP and Visio expert.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Chris Mauldin says

    June 20, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    David,

    Sometimes when additional features are added to a product they in turn identify new weaknesses. Such is the case for Visio 2010. The addition of the BPMN stencil made us all very excited!!! So off we went, building diagram after diagram in the BPMN stencil. We even tried out some tools like Analyst View from Global 360 (excellent product!!!). Everything seemed on track.
    Then we moved to phase two. The BPMN standards allows for the graphics themselves to be modified to allow the diagrams to be more easily read by the non-techies. Our next step was to extend the stencil by making some custom graphics. For instance, a start event that had a picture of a person with a mail cart inside the circle, or a task that had a truck inside the box.

    That is when we discovered that there was no way to change the graphic without losing all the custom functionality and data placed on the stencils by Microsoft. Then we thought “perhaps the graphics are stored externally” and we can copy a shape and change its data to reference a new graphic? No such luck. The shapes are embedded in the stencil (or at least we can’t find them anywhere).

    We understand the new shape would need to have the same dimensions as the old one. Given that BPMN is designed to allow the actual image to be changed. And, many examples of BPMN diagrams do just that to make the diagram more appealing we were stunned to discover there seems to be no way to change them.

    Worst case we could ungroup, modify and then try to replace everything that Microsoft added to the BPMN shapes … but … surely there is an easier way? I could easily see us having a library of 100-150 cutsom graphics for the TASK shape just on the job we are doing right now!!

    End of rant. By the way, if you have any suggestions please forward them. We have already told the customer we will make custom shapes for them.

    All the best,

    Chris Mauldin

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      July 6, 2011 at 6:57 am

      Chris,
      There is no reason why you can’t create your oen shapes to work with the Visio BPMN validation rules. The trick is to either copy all of the relevant User and Shape Data values from the existing shapes, or to modify a copy of one of the existing shapes.
      The latter would be the safest rute, but, whatever you do DO NOT ungroup the shape … this will remove the relevant cells. Instead, you should edit the shape by opening the group.

      Reply
    • davidjpp says

      September 24, 2011 at 8:20 pm

      You should not ungroup these special masters, but you can edit them to put your own graphics in. The best way is probably to add them to a document stencil, and then ensure that Match master by name on drop is checked. Then save this document as a template.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Update to LayerManager add-in for non-English users
  • Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio beyond its limits
  • Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio to the limits!
  • Teams Tuesday Podcast Recording about Visio
  • Linking Data to Visio Shapes in Code

Categories

Tags

Accessibility Add-Ins Connectors Containers Data Export Data Graphics Data Import Data Visualizer Educational Excel GraphDatabase Hyperlinks Icon Sets JavaScript Layers Legend Link Data to Shapes Lists MSIgnite MVP Office365 Org Chart PowerApps PowerBI PowerQuery Processes Shape Data Shape Design ShapeSheet ShapeSheet Functions SharePoint 2013 SQL Teams Themes Validation VBA Video Visio Visio 2007 Visio 2013 Visio for the Web Visio Online Visio Services Visio Viewer Webinar

Footer

bVisual Profile

The UK-based independent Visio consultancy with a worldwide reach. We have over 25 years experience of providing data visualization solutions to companies around the globe.

Learn more about bVisual

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Search this website

Recent posts

  • Update to LayerManager add-in for non-English users
  • Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio beyond its limits
  • Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio to the limits!
  • Teams Tuesday Podcast Recording about Visio
  • Linking Data to Visio Shapes in Code

Copyright © 2023 · Executive Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in