bVisual

bVisual Blog by David Parker

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Seattle Trip May 2009

I went to see the latest version of Visio last week at Microsoft Campus in Redmond, but, as usual, chose to stay in Seattle because it is such a great city.  I love to walk down to Pike Place market in the morning to ponder over which specialist food to select, or to smell the flowers as they are arranged for the day’s pickings.  So, with a piroshky (Russian pastry) and coffee I strolled to the little park at the end to contemplate the day.  The view across Puget Sound is fantastic and I wanted to capture it to share with my friends.  I only have a handy little digital camera, but fortunately, I recently became aware of a handy little application called Microsoft Image Composite Editor (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/ ) .  MICE patches your photos together to make a larger panorama, and then you can export it into many different formats.

I have saved four panoramas for viewing using Deep Zoom in Silverlight 2.

Seattle Trip May 2009
Seattle Trip May 2009

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celMaker 2 (part 2)

My last post was only yesterday, when I released celMaker 2 for Visio 2007 and Excel 2007, but I have already had some feedback from my fellow Visio MVP, John Goldsmith.  He found a couple of “bugs” and suggested an improvement, so they have all been implemented.

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Introducing celMaker 2

I was recently asked to provide a  new version of celMaker that works with Visio 2007 and Excel 2007, so I got my old VB6 code out of SourceSafe and upgraded it so that I could run it on my Vista 64 laptop too.  I also decided that I would release this version to the public as freeware because I have added no new features.So, what is celMaker? And where can you download it?

Last one first … you can download it from here : http://www.bvisual.net/products/celMaker/publish.htm (under review)

Most Visio users will have the components, so you can just click the Launch link.

1. Introduction

celMaker is a developer(ish) tool for Visio which allows the most often used sections of a Visio ShapeSheet to be copied into an Excel spreadsheet, or from an Excel spreadsheet onto a Visio master.
This means that the Visio Shape designer can create one master with its Shape Data (nee Custom  Properties), User Cells, Actions, Smart Tags, Controls and Connection Points, and then save this to an Excel spreadsheet for backup, verification, discussions, documentation or transfer to another Master.
The Excel spreadsheet can be created manually or by reverse engineering existing Visio masters.
celMaker is provided as a stand alone executable that requires both Visio and Excel to be running, and can be used for many different types of diagram projects.

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Impending SP2 for Visio 2007

All programs have bugs, but some bugs are more annoying than others.  One such bug is the often missing ribbon UI in Excel when you generate a report from Visio.  So, I was delighted when the Visio team informed me of the impending service pack 2 for Microsoft Office Visio 2007, and found that it includes a fix for this problem: ttp://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/16/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-due-to-ship-april-28th.aspx

So, what is this bug?  Well, I often run reports straight from Visio using the rudimentary report writer:

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Visio in XPS and Interesting Microsoft Office Labs Projects

For the past two years, I have been adding XAML-based projects to my collection, alongside the normal Visio libraries and automation code that I normally produce.  The reason is quite simple : both environments have the ability of linking vector graphics and data together in an exciting, interactive and controllable way.  There is a certain smartness to both with the ability to binding data to graphical appearance.  XAML seems to be present in all of Microsoft’s graphic products, in the form of WPF, Silverlight .and Xps.  Now, we know that there are great things to come viz-a-viz Visio and XAML in the next version, and there is Saveen Reddy,s excellent Visio Export to XAML project on CodePlex ( https://www.openhub.net/p/VisioExportToXAML ), but most people do not realise that Xps is XAML, but compressed.

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Creating an Org Chart without the Org Chart Wizard

Microsoft Office Visio has had an Org Chart Wizard for as long as I can remember (and I have been using Visio since 1996).  It has gone through several iterations, but basically it provides a simple way to create personnel hierarchies from a variety of data sources.  It even has a command line interface so that the charts can be created with a minimum of user interaction.  This is great, but it is limited.  Firstly, it does not take advantage of the new Link Data to Shapes and Data Graphics in Visio 207 Professional; secondly, it only does direct reports with just one type of layout; and thirdly, you cannot refresh the diagram easily.  Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to overcome some of these obstacles using the new features of Visio 2007 Professional and with a little code.

Visio installs a sample OrgData.xls Excel spreadsheet in the folder <Program Files>Microsoft OfficeOffice12SAMPLES1033 by default, so I have copied this file and slightly amended it.

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