bVisual

Shape Design

Published on by

New MSDN Article : Introduction to Validation Rules in Visio Premium 2010

I was planning to write a quick blog today, but it seems that Microsoft have moved all spaces.live.com bloggers to WordPress! Another new tool to learn ….

In the meantime, I am pleased to announce that Microsoft have just published an article that I have written at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff847470.aspx

This article goes through the new diagram validation feature in Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 and shows you how to use the Validation API to create your own rules and rule sets to validate Visio 2010 diagrams.

Of course, those of you who wish to delve deeper could always buy my book from all good bookstores – see http://www.visiorules.com

Published on by

Viewing Pre-Visio 2010 Documents in Silverlight

You should all know by now that Microsoft Visio 2010 can save as Silverlight files … which is absolutely great … if you have Visio 2010. What if you do not have Visio 2010 but you want to view Visio documents in Silverlight? Well, you could save your document as a PDF or XPS file, and then view it in a viewer. A Silverlight viewer for XPS files would allow them to be seen on any browser or operating system that supports Silverlight, not just Windows. Although Microsoft have included an XPS viewer in Windows 7, and have made XPS viewers for earlier Windows versions, Microsoft do seem to have cooled-off promoting XPS as a replacement for PDF, which is a shame because XPS is an open, extensible format that is based on XAML.

Unfortunately, Microsoft do not provide a free Silverlight viewer for either of these formats, but there are several companies that do. I know that there is a CodePlex project for a Silverlight XPS Viewer ( http://azharthegreat.codeplex.com/ ), but it does not currently seem to like XPS documents from Visio. However, the company, First Floor Software,  that provides the excellent Silverlight Spy has also written the Document Toolkit for Silverlight ( http://firstfloorsoftware.com/documenttoolkit ). This Silverlight control enables you to view an XPS document in several different ways, for example, with a page turn action, or by using thumbnails, or even to display the metadata inside the XPS file. The latter is extremely useful for checking the formation of the document.

Actually, there are two methods for creating XPS files from Visio …

The first method is to use the Microsoft add-in. In Microsoft Office Visio 2007, you have the option to download the free add-in from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en ). It is already built- into Microsoft Visio 2010. This will create an XPS file, complete with hyperlinks as necessary, as can be seen in the screenshot below when I loaded one of my Visio documents into the Document Toolkit online demo ( see http://firstfloorsoftware.com/documenttoolkit/online-demo/ ):

image
[Read more…] about Viewing Pre-Visio 2010 Documents in Silverlight

Published on by

A Patch Panel that can be 1U too

Microsoft Visio 2007 Professional and 2010 Professional and Premium includes the Network / Rack Diagram template, which opens the Rack-mounted equipment stencil. This stencil includes the Patch Panel master which can be stretched from 2U to 25U high. However, I have often required a 1U patch Panel, so I decided to look into the Microsoft shape to see if it could be modified to allow it to be reduced to 1U without looking ridiculous.

image
[Read more…] about A Patch Panel that can be 1U too

Published on by

Microsoft Visio 2010 Business Process Diagramming and Validation book published

Phew … my new book is published, and I have a new Visio 2010 add-in, Rules Tools, to accompany it.

If you are a Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium Edition user or developer who wants to get to grips with both the basic features of Visio 2010 and the new Validation Rules in this edition, then this book is for you. A working knowledge of Microsoft Visio, and optionally .NET for the add-in code, is required, though previous knowledge of business process diagramming is not necessary. More experienced Visio users will gain valuable knowledge for building add-ins and creating and publishing rules. If you want to achieve results from Visio 2010 beyond the ordinary out-of-the-box features, then this book is ideal for you. Although this book covers the Premium Edition, much of the book is still useful if you are a Visio 2010 Standard Edition or Professional Edition user.

Microsoft Visio 2010

Microsoft Visio 2010 Business Process Diagramming and Validation :
https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-visio-2010-business-process-diagramming/book

Rules Tools

The new Validation API enables businesses to write custom validation rules to suit their own purposes.
Microsoft Visio 2010 provides built-in rule sets for flowcharts, BPMN diagrams and SharePoint Designer Workflows. However, it does not provide a rule set developer interface for the analyzing, amending or creating rules. This Rules Tools add-in fills this gap by providing an extra group in the Process tab in Visio 2010 that allows users to analyze existing rules, display issues, and to export/import rule sets.

Go to the Rules Tools page for more information

Published on by

Automating Area and Perimeter Length Shape Data

[UPDATE: Microsoft introduced a new function into Visio 2010 called PATHLENGTH(…), so some of the following is now not required. See Automatic Line and Segment Lengths in Visio )

Another newsgroup question has asked about automating the update of shape area and perimeter lengths.  Now, this is an area (no pun intended) that I am most interested in because I used to do a lot of space planning.  Visio Professional does include Space and Boundary shapes on the Resources stencil that use an add-in to update the area, but does nothing about the perimeter length.  These shapes do highlight some of the issues to be considered though…

  • Visio pages can be scaled, and indeed the various floor plan and site layout templates in Visio are pre-scaled.  Most templates are not scaled, and  therefore default to 1:1 scale.
  • Visio measures everything internally in inches, although you can display in almost whatever units you choose.
  • The Visio Application object has a handy ConvertResult (StringOrNumber, UnitsIn, UnitsOut) method, which can be used for linear and area measurements … and can also be used for date and times.
  • Visio can store decimal numbers to a very high degree of precision (I counted 14 decimal places), but you almost always want to format the display.
  • Visio can call a method in a VBA project when the values in specified cells are changed.
  • It is easy to display Shape Data in a shape, either by using Data Graphics or by Insert Field

[Read more…] about Automating Area and Perimeter Length Shape Data