bVisual Blog by David Parker

Published on July 13, 2008 by David Parker

Flags of the World

I was recently asked how to add a country flag to Visio Org Chart shapes automatically. Well, as I am currently working with world data at the moment, I have taken up the challenge. Firstly, the CIA have an excellent source of information, called the World Factbook ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ ). You can find all sorts of information about every country in the world, including, of course, their flags. There are over 240 countries at the moment, and there are various codes used by different systems to identify them. Even the name may not be the same, for example, do I live in UK, United Kingdom, Great Britain, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or just plain old England? Answers on a post card, please, addressed to …..?

Alternatively, a country can be identified accurately with a code, but you need to know which system is being used. United Kingdom can be identified by GB in the Iso 2 character system, or 826 in the Iso numeric system, or UK in the FIPS 10 system. The CIA World Factbook utilises the FIPS 10 code, so consequently, all of the country related web pages and images are coded with this system.

I have already created an Access database with all this information, so I decided to use this knowledge to create a Flags of the World Visio Master.

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Published on June 19, 2008 by David Parker

Enhancing Visio Data Graphics Text Callouts

Visio 2007 Professional introduced the wonderful Data Graphics feature to display Shape Data in a clear visual way, but it is not clear how you may, for example, change the font of even the simplest Graphic Item type, Text Callouts. In this blog, I’ll show you one method that I employ to vary the appearance of Text Callouts. The same technique can be used for other Graphic Item types, Icon Sets and Data Bars.

I am using the the sample IT Asset Management drawing to demonstrate throughout, which can be found in the Samples Template Category. In this diagram, the server shapes on the topology page use the Topology 1 Data Graphic, which can be seen in the Data Graphics panel.

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Published on May 25, 2008 by David Parker

Visio FMPrint Add-on

A recent newsgroup post asked about accessing a network printers management page from a Visio page, so I thought I would share some things that I discovered a while back. Visio 2003 and Visio 2007 Professional edition include an add-on called FMPrint, which you can use with any shape in Visio. I used it with some network printer shapes in a couple of add-ins myself. I’m not aware of any public documentation about this handy little add-on, so here is what I have discovered.

You can see the add-on in action by opening the Shapes Maps and Floor Plans Building Plan Resources stencil and dropping the Printer shape onto your page. Alternativaly you can start a new Maps and Floor Plans Space Plan drawing. Notice the SmartTag in the bottom left corner which gives you access to the FMPrint add-on:

ELRES_e9487652-b664-4177-9640-9abe274eac80SELRES_7ee59eae-24c4-4b67-a7c4-14f5a00ae6deSELRES_3c86ab09-c348-43d6-bb46-3a8e764deba7SELRES_e28b5ce5-fd6b-45cd-af68-839c48db024e

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Published on April 24, 2008 by David Parker

Linking Visio WBS Modeler Diagrams to Project

I have recently been asked if it is possible to update the % Complete data diagrams created with the WBS Modeler Visio 2007 Add-in ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=26229 ). Well, it is always possible with custom code, but it is intended that the WBS Modeler diagrams can be refreshed using the Link Data to Shapes feature in Visio 2007 Professional. I know this because I wrote WBS Modeler, and in this article, I will tell you how.

Firstly, I will use the Commercial Construction project that is installed with the Visio SDK for this example, which I show an extract from below.

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Published on April 21, 2008 by David Parker

Wanna See Some Visio MVPs?

Last week, Microsoft invited all worldwide MVPs to the annual MVP shindig in Seattle. So, I thought it may be interesting for some to see what a Visio MVP looks like!

Left to right – me (MVP UK), Senaj Lelic (MVP Germany) and John Marshall (MVP Canada) – the oldest and longest serving Visio MVP!

David Salaguinto (Microsoft), Dave Edson (MVP USA – currently), Tim Davenport (Microsoft), Graham Wideman (MVP USA/Canada), and Dan Albertson (Microsoft).

Senaj Lelic (again), Al Edlund (MVP USA) and Chris Roth (MVP USA/Austria/Germany/…)

We would like to thank Microsoft Visio product team for two very enjoyable days on campus (trying to beat the Outlook guys to the food), and I’m sure they really do appreciate our feedback!

Published on April 20, 2008 by David Parker

Setting Visio Shape Cell Values By Connections

A recent newsgroup poster asked me to explain how to set the line color and weight of a connector according to the shapes it is connected to. So, in this article, I have tried to explain one method of achieving this with minimal external coding.

In this example, I have created a rectangle shape that has a single Shape Data row, MyData, which has a fixed list of values, A;B;C.

The connector shape has been modified to trigger an event whenever a connection is made or unmade. If the user successfully connects two rectangles with the same MyData value, then the line (weight and color) of the connector shape is amended to match the rectangle shapes.