Last day of 2014, and the last of my word and number games in Visio … this is Scrabbled, which is a trainer for Scrabble. Okay, it was too difficult to do a fully working Scrabble board without code, and I was likely to break copyright if I did, so I invented a game with the Scrabble tile rack.
I have some suggested rules, but you can make your own up … I just wanted to see what I could do with just ShapeSheet functions..
The holidays are almost over, so I now present my Yahtzee game in Visio just using ShapeSheet formulas …. no VBA or add-in! Pretty soon, I will have a whole compendium of games, but I think this is my most complete yet. Yahtzee is very similar to Poker Dice, but we used to play Yahtzee a lot as kids, so maybe I am regressing. Anyway, setting these games up in Visio demonstrates the power of the ShapeSheet functions, which is necessary for the creation of efficient Visio shapes. I have also made the Dice Racks into List containers that can only hold the Die List Item shapes.
Sometimes I try ideas out in Visio without a specific goal in mind, and I have been creating a Visio deck of cards recently, so I thought I would share it. In fact, I have only created one card but it is capable of being any card in the deck by changing its shape data! I can even get a randomly generated card … all without any code except for formulas in the ShapeSheet.
Firstly, I used four icons for hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades, from my set of metro icons stencils ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2012/11/20/announcing-metro-icons-and-a-windows-app-tile-shape-for-visio/ ). I decided to keep the icons for the suits separate, with four per suit, but linked their visibility to a Suit Shape Data fixed list row. I also displayed the Value Shape Data as the text of each icon.
I added a Face Up Shape Data row so that the suit and value are hidden by the Microsoft Office logo.
[Read more…] about A Visio Deck of CardsI am in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, today. All talk is of the vote on Scottish independence next week … so, I thought I would make a Union Jack Visio shape that can be automatically changed, using Shape Data values, to represent the countries left in the union!
The Union Jack is comprised of the flags of England, Scotland and Ireland … sorry Wales, you are only a principality. Yes, I know that Northern Ireland is a province, but it was decided that St Patrick’s Saltire should be kept even after Eire got independence.
Note that a single country flag has an aspect ratio of 5:3, but a multi-country union flag has an aspect ratio of 2:1.
A reader of my blog recently asked whether it is possible to use the icons in out-of-the-box Visio as the main shape, and get it to refresh with data. I pointed out that all of the icon sets are available in a handy stencil under Visio Extras, so all that remains is to make the icon display change according to data values.
Whenever I have been asked why I like Visio so much, I have usually cited its ability to connect shapes together; its ability to link to data; and its programmability. Visio 2010 formally added a structured diagram concept and API, and the premium edition introduced diagram validation. So many different types of Visio diagrams require elements to be connected together correctly, and I often have to add a little extra into the connectors to make them smarter.
A connector is a Visio shape that has 1-D behavior. The most used example is the Dynamic connector shape, which not only connects elements together, but can also re-route itself according to the layout and routing options selected for a page.
[Read more…] about Adding More Smartness to Visio Connectors