Viewing the Visio Custom Line & Fill Patterns

I was trying to review the appearance of the custom line and fill patterns in Visio, but was annoyed that they are only displaying a name without a preview image. I could not find them easily on the web either, so I thought I would list them here, with images. These custom patterns are available in three Microsoft-provided stencils in the Visio Extras category.

Each of the tree stencils work in the same way …. simply have the desired stencil open when you select a shape and use Format Shape to edit the Line or Fill Pattern.

The line patterns can be formatted with colour and weight, and the fill patterns can have the fill colour changed too.

These patterns can be extremely useful in specific types of diagrams, but they also show-off the flexibility of Visio.

Using Custom Fill Patterns from a List

A reader asked how to fill a shape with a custom fill pattern from a fixed list in of a shape. They had no trouble with the first 25 standard fill patterns, but couldn’t figure out how to apply a custom pattern. So, I shall try to explain how this can be done … (more…)

Another Dot Grid …

My good friend, John Goldsmith, recently published a blog about how to create a printable dot grid in Visio (see http://visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/vislog/2011/02/dot-grid-backgrounds.html#more ). This inspired me to share another way that you can create a dot grid in Visio. This time I will use a custom fill pattern, rather than new shape. This has the advantage that…