bVisual

Shape Data

Published on by

Adding the Sixth Legend Icon in Visio 2010

In my previous two articles, I described how to have 6 icons in a Data Graphic Icon Set, and provided some VBA code to make your own icons sets from existing Visio shapes or images. One thing that I overlooked was the Insert Legend command in Visio 2010, because it does not add the sixth icon automatically, so this blog describes how to add it. As a side effect, the code also enables the legend labels of icon and CBV (Color By Value) items to be edited.

image



When you use the Insert Legend command, it examines the Data Graphics used on the active page, to create legends for each Icon Set or Color By Value settings that it finds. Closer examination of the legend shapes, shows that an instance of the Icon Set master shape is added for each of the icons found.

[Read more…] about Adding the Sixth Legend Icon in Visio 2010

Published on by

Make Your Own Visio Data Graphic Icons Sets … automatically

In my last post, I showed how you can actually have up to six icons in a Visio Data Graphics Icon Set ( see http://davidjpp.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/how-to-have-six-icons-in-a-visio-data-graphic-icon-set/ ), and I finished by saying that I would now show how to create new icon sets from existing shapes … automatically. In fact, I will show you how to do it with existing SmartShapes or with images.

I was asked to make KPI icons from six weather images:

image
[Read more…] about Make Your Own Visio Data Graphic Icons Sets … automatically

Published on by

How to have six icons in a Visio Data Graphic Icon Set

I was recently asked to represent the values of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Visio. Great, I thought, this is just what Visio’s Data Graphic Icon Sets are for! Only trouble was, that there were six possible values for the KPI, but all the example Icon Sets have a maximum of five icons in them. So, I had to come up with a way of displaying six icons …

In the following example, I have defined a Shape Data row with a Fixed List type that can have a value from the list “3;2;1;-1;-2;-3”

image

I applied the Faces Icon Set, and set icons for each value, except for –1:

[Read more…] about How to have six icons in a Visio Data Graphic Icon Set

Published on by

Data Import & Export Features in Visio 2010

I have been using (Microsoft) Visio for importing and exporting data since 1996, and was an early tester/adopter of the Database Wizard features in Visio 4.1 (I think). I think of Visio as a data visualization tool, yet I cannot recall seeing a comprehensive list of the areas in Visio, out-of-the-box, where you can import and export data easily. So I decided to draw a data-linked diagram of just this for Visio 2010.

image



I have made the files available for you at the following links:

[Read more…] about Data Import & Export Features in Visio 2010

Published on by

Using Character Map Symbols as Data Graphic Icons

I attended the ninth DDD on Saturday (see http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/ ), and, as usual, there were many interesting presentations. Sam Bourton extolled the virtues of Microsoft Expression Blend for WPF and Silverlight developers (NOT designers note!), and he showed a neat trick to create icons quickly by using Wingding symbols. Basically, he created a text block in Blend, inserted a symbol from one of the three Wingding fonts character maps, then converted the symbol to a path. It struck me that we could do a similar trick in Visio to create Data Graphic Icon Sets cheaply … so here goes…..
In this example, I am using a Process shape from the Basic Flowchart stencil because it has a Status Shape Data row that is defined as a choice from six different values (the first value is an empty text string).

Choice of Values for Status Shape Data row

[Read more…] about Using Character Map Symbols as Data Graphic Icons

Published on by

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.

image
[Read more…] about Creating an Org Chart without the Org Chart Wizard