I have a new book on Visio coming out in June called Mastering Data Visualization with Microsoft Visio Professional 2016. It covers the ins and outs of data with Visio!
Please visit http://bit.ly/1SeVfwW for more information.
Packt Publishing are currently running a deal on my last book, Microsoft Visio 2013 Business Process Diagramming and Validation , until 12th April 2016:
Follow this link : 1LHNDwI
Shape Design
Visio Rocks for Flag Semaphore … or another use of Lists
My good friend and fellow Visio MVP, John Goldsmith, aka visualSignals.typepad.co.uk, was telling me about a family visit to a semaphore tower over the weekend. Well, I just couldn’t resist making a flag semaphore shape in Visio. First, I looked up semaphore up Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore .
The character can easily be changed with the Shape Data panel … and watch the arms rotate … best with a wheel mouse rolling up and down in the Character drop-down
[Read more…] about Visio Rocks for Flag Semaphore … or another use of ListsDisplaying the Fill and Line Section Values of a shape
A few years ago, I wrote an article about displaying the RGB value of shapes ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2010/04/22/displaying-the-rgb-values-of-shapes ). I had forgotten about it, but a reader recently asked if it was possible to force the Foregnd field to display the RGB value for the standard color palette values. For example, red is number 2 in the palette, and has a value of RGB(255,0,0). In revisiting the article, I realised that there is a smarter way to display the values, without the need of any macros.
I simply created a master shape that exposes each of the cells in the Fill and Line sections as Shape Data rows. This allows me to enter values in the Shape Data window and see the effect on the shape immediately. So, it was easy to drop one shape, insert text fields, and then use the Array Shapes tool to layout the shapes. Finally, I just entered the the standard color map numbers 0 to 24 in the FillForegnd Shape Data row.
[Read more…] about Displaying the Fill and Line Section Values of a shapeUsing Visio Professional 2016 Text Callouts, Icon Sets and Data Bars to display data directly
Last year, I blogged about using the master shapes used in Data Graphics in Visio 2013 Professional for displaying data directly, rather than embedded in other shapes as graphic items. Now that Visio Professional 2016 is released, and because there have been some improvements to the graphics, especially for Text Callouts, I have created stencils from the new masters, with some slight changes as outlined in my earlier articles. As before, the stencils can be downloaded into the My Shapes folder, from where they will be available for use at any time. These stencils are freely available to anyone with a Visio Professional 2016 license.
Text Callouts
[Read more…] about Using Visio Professional 2016 Text Callouts, Icon Sets and Data Bars to display data directlyImproving the legend of multi-data Data Graphic items in Visio
Data Graphics in Visio Professional (and Premium) are a great way of surfacing the information in each shape, but it can be easy to forget what the Color By Value, Icon Sets or Data-bars represent:
[Read more…] about Improving the legend of multi-data Data Graphic items in VisioUsing multiSelect in Visio
I have had some comments that the diagram in my previous post ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2015/11/16/data-import-and-export-features-in-visio-2016-and-2013/ ) was a little hard to follow. May I suggest my free multiSelect add-in can help? ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2012/07/20/multiple-selection-methods-for-visio-diagrams/ ).
In the following screenshot from Visio 2016 with multiSelect installed, I have selected the Data \ Custom Import feature shape. This makes the multiSelect ribbon tab visible, and I have ticked Options \ Pan and Zoom, and I am about to click the Shape Selection \ Parents button.
[Read more…] about Using multiSelect in Visio