bVisual

ShapeSheet Functions

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How to play Yahtzee with Visio

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.

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A Visio Countdown to Xmas

I presented a Visio deck of cards in a previous post ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/12/03/a-visio-deck-of-cards/ ), and now I present a real game that can be played with Visio over the holiday season. Countdown is a British TV programme with word and number puzzles. It was the first programme to be aired on Channel 4, and 70 series have been broadcast since its debut on 2 November 1982. With over 6,000 episodes, Countdown is one of the longest-running game shows in the world, along with the original French version, Des chiffres et des lettres, which has been running on French television continuously since 1965. Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_%28game_show%29.

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A Visio Deck of Cards

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.

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I added a Face Up Shape Data row so that the suit and value are hidden by the Microsoft Office logo.

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Union Jacked?

I 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.

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US Election Special – Vector Visio 2013 Icons

Whilst the east coast of America has been battered by hurricane Sandy from the Atlantic (my commiserations), Microsoft have been hosting the //Build/ conference in the Pacific North West (specifically Redmond). I have been watching some of the overly fed attendees whoop with joy as they got given 100 Gb SkyDrive account, a Microsoft Surface and a Nokia Lumia 920 each. Yes, I felt jealous, but it would have cost me much more than their combined cost to get out there, so I stuck my head-phones into my large laptop and watched from the comfort of my living room. The reality of the devastation caused by nature can easily overwhelm the storm of technological advances that have been recently announced, but I am genuinely excited by Windows 8, SharePoint 2013, Office 2013 and, of course, Visio 2013.

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A Page Grid with Labels

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog about Page Grids and Off Page References ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2011/09/02/page-grids-and-off-page-references/ ), and I promised to accommodate page margins. In addition, a user commented that a matching printable grid would be useful …. so here is an update. In this blog I provide an updated Off-page reference master, along with new GridLines and GridLabel masters.

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