Visio Tips and Tricks

Microsoft® Office Visio® Tips and Tricks

Introduction

This document is intended to provide you with a brief collection of more than 60 of some of the tips and tricks which will serve to make you more productive in working with Microsoft Visio. It is by no means a complete compendium of all of the shortcuts, techniques and information available on the subject. For further information and resources, please see the Resources section at the end of this document.

Icons

This document uses several Icons to assist you in understanding the tips and tricks. There are icons which show you which version of Visio that these tips and tricks apply to. There are also icons which show which edition of Visio, Standard or Professional, that the tips and tricks apply to. Finally, there are also icons which flag the particular tip or trick as a shortcut or easy access feature, and a tip or trick of importance to your usage of Visio. The icons used in this document are:

ICON / MEANING
/ Applies to Microsoft Office Visio 2003
/ Applies to Microsoft Visio 2002
/ Applies to Microsoft Visio 2000
/ Applies to Microsoft Visio Professional Edition
/ Applies to Microsoft Visio Standard Edition
/ Indicates that this is a shortcut. This is a faster methodology than the standard system of utilizing menus and diverse dialogs to accomplish this task.
/ Indicates that this is an important tip or trick. Knowledge of this particular tip or trick will be highly useful to your daily use of Visio

All of the tips and tricks will be presented to you as if you are using Visio 2003 Professional Edition; however, if the technique is applicable to other versions and editions, the Icons at the beginning of each tip or trick will assist you in using these features under these other versions and editions as well.

Content

This document is structured to provide you tips and tricks in the following areas:

¨ The Visio Environment

¨ Basic Diagram Creation Tools

¨ Basic Drawing Techniques

¨ Formatting SmartShape™ Symbols

¨ Predefined Diagram Types

The Visio Environment

Toolbars

Visio has multiple configurable Toolbars which are designed to place the Visio commands that you need the most right at your mouse cursor.

To choose which Toolbars you would like to have available within your working Visio environment:

¨ Right-click with your mouse on any open area of the toolbars area at the top of your Visio working environment. This action will display a context menu with a listing of all of the available toolbars. If the toolbar name has a check mark next to the name, that toolbar is actively displayed in your Visio working environment. If the toolbar name does not have a check mark next to the name it is available to be displayed but is not currently active.

¨ Click with your mouse on any toolbar name. If the toolbar name has a check mark next to the name it will be deactivated and no longer displayed. If the toolbar name does not have a check mark next to the name it will be activated and displayed in your Visio working environment.

Each of the toolbars display icons applicable to differing tasks within the Visio environment. Some may be active while working with a particular task while others may be inactive.

Toolbars are sensitive to the screen resolution of the local machine that Visio is running on. The greater the screen resolution, the greater the number of toolbars and icons that are able to be displayed.

Each toolbar can have a custom selection of icons, functions and tools contained within the toolbar. To customize a toolbar by adding functions to the toolbar:

¨ Click with your mouse on the Customize… context menu item. This will display the Customize dialog. The left list in the dialog contains a listing of the available categories. The right list in the dialog contains a listing of the available functions for that particular category.

¨ Select a category from the left list by clicking with your mouse on that particular category

¨ Select a particular function from the right list, click with your mouse and drag the function onto any displayed toolbar and release your mouse button. This action will add that function to that toolbar.

To customize a toolbar by deleting functions from the toolbar:

¨ Click with your mouse on the toolbar you wish to delete items from and drag the particular icon off the toolbar. This action will delete that function from that toolbar.

Choose Drawing Type

Visio utilizes a feature called “Choose Drawing Type” to assist you in selecting a particular diagram type to create. The available options will be discussed individually later in this document under the Section entitled Predefined Diagram Types. Should you need to create new diagram based upon a totally blank drawing environment you will need to perform the following action:

¨ Select File ► New ► Choose Drawing Type… from the Visio Menu system

¨ In the New Drawing pane at the right of the Visio environment select the Blank Drawing item.

This action will begin a new diagram which has no stencils open and is based upon the page size defaults in Visio.

To add stencils to the Visio environment and make master SmartShape™ symbols available for inclusion in your diagram you will need to perform the following action:

¨ Select File Shapes
Then select the stencil you need from the list of available solutions and the stencils contained in that solution

¨ Select the Stencil Icon from the Standard Toolbar
Then select the stencil you need from the list of available solutions and the stencils contained in that solution

Basic Diagram Creation Tools

The Drawing Page

The Visio drawing page is user configurable both in size and orientation. You can choose from a listing of available typical page sizes by performing the following action:

¨ Select File ► Page Setup… From the Visio menu system

¨ In the Page Setup dialog, under the Print Setup tab, in the Printer Paper drop-down list, select from the list of available paper sizes.

If you need a drawing environment with a non-standard size, you can easily manipulate the drawing page size directly in the drawing area by performing the following action:

¨ Ensure that the drawing page is displayed and is the active window

¨ Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and move your mouse cursor to an edge of the drawing page. Your mouse cursor will change to a resize arrow. If you pause at the page edge a tool tip will appear informing you that you will perform a Resize Page operation.

¨ Click with your left mouse button, hold, and drag that paper edge in or out to the desired size.

¨ Repeat this action for any and / or all of the four edges of the drawing page.

To change the page orientation between Portrait and Landscape modes perform the following action:

¨ Select File ► Page Setup… From the Visio menu system

¨ In the Page Setup dialog, under the Print Setup tab, select either of the two radio buttons for Portrait or Landscape orientation.

Stencils

Visio utilizes the concept of Stencils to assist you in creating a diagram with pre-drawn SmartShape™ symbols. The Stencils organize the SmartShape™ symbols into easily recognizable and logical categories based upon the type of diagram you wish to create. In the Choose Drawing Type topic above, we detailed how to open a Stencil in your drawing environment for use. There are some issues that you might want to be aware of when working with stencils that can assist you in understanding how the formatting and size of the SmartShape™ symbols is handled by Visio.

When you drag a SmartShape™ symbol from a Stencil to your drawing page you are actually creating a copy of that Master SmartShape™ symbol in your diagram’s local Document Stencil. This local copy is the source for all default formatting and size information.

Each subsequent time you drag a SmartShape™ symbol from the Stencil onto your diagram, Visio checks for the existence of a local copy of that Master SmartShape™ symbol on your diagram’s local Document Stencil. If a copy exists, the local copy is used to create the SmartShape™ symbol in the diagram. If it does not, Visio will first copy the Master SmartShape™ symbol to the local Document Stencil and then use that copy to create the SmartShape™ symbol in the diagram.

This concept is important since it gives you the ability to change any aspect of that local master and have that change be populated throughout all of the instances in the diagram. However, if you have made a change to a particular instance of that Master SmartShape™ symbol in the diagram, that instance will lose its inheritance for that particular aspect of the SmartShape™ symbol.

As an example, if you were to drag a Desk SmartShape™ symbol from the Building Plan ► Furniture stencil and repeat that action four times, you would actually have four instances, (or exact copies) of the desk on your local Document stencil. If, later, you were to change the color of a particular desk by selecting Format ► Fill from the Visio menus and change the fill color from white to red, that one instance would, indeed, be red.

If you later altered the fill color of the local copy of the desk master on the local document stencil from white to blue, and save the edited master, the three copies of the desk which had not had the red fill applied would turn blue, whereas the red desk would retain its red fill color.

Connecting SmartShape™ Symbols

Many Visio diagram types are what can generally be referred to as “Connected Diagrams”; that is, they consist of SmartShape™ symbols connected other SmartShape™ symbols via lines or Dynamic connectors to demonstrate flow or association. Typically a Visio user would drag a SmartShape™ symbol from a Stencil then drag a second SmartShape™ symbol from the stencil, then connect them by dragging a dynamic connector SmartShape™ symbol (for example) from a stencil or selecting the connector from the Standard Toolbar.

Connecting SmartShape™ symbols can be far easier than this! Here is a process that will save you lots of time in creating connected diagrams:

¨ Drag a SmartShape™ symbol from (for example) the Basic Flowchart Shapes stencil onto the drawing page.

¨ Ensure that the SmartShape™ symbol that you just added to your diagram is selected (its green sizing handles are selected)

¨ Next select the Dynamic Connector tool from the Standard toolbar.

¨ Now with the Dynamic Connector tool selected, drag another SmartShape™ symbol from the Flowchart stencil and drop it into your diagram. Note how the two SmartShape™ symbols are automatically connected with Dynamic glue.

Dynamic glue means that no matter how the SmartShape™ symbols are laid out on the diagram, Visio will sort out the best position for them to attach to the SmartShape™ symbols. Static, or point-to-point, glue ensures that the connectors remain glued to the particular connection point on the SmartShape™ symbol.

You can alter the connection type between Dynamic and Static glue at any time you desire. If you click on the endpoint of a Dynamic connector and drag it off a SmartShape™ symbol it will break the glue. If, then, you click and drag that endpoint to the edge of a SmartShape™ symbol at a connection point (as indicated by the presence of a small blue “X” on the SmartShape™ symbol) you will establish Static, or point-to-point, glue.

To establish Dynamic glue, click and drag an endpoint of a Dynamic Connector to the center of a SmartShape™ symbol and pause over the symbol. Note that the edges of the SmartShape™ symbol are highlighted in a double-red border. Release the endpoint while the SmartShape™ symbol is highlighted and Dynamic glue will be established.

If you need specific point-to-point glue and there is no connection point at the location you need on the SmartShape™ symbol, you can create a connection point in the following manner:

¨ Locate the Dynamic Connector tool on the Standard Toolbar in Visio. At the right edge of the tool select the down-pointing arrow and select the Connection Point tool.

¨ With the Connection Point tool selected, click on the SmartShape™ symbol you wish to add a connection point to, and holding down the Ctrl key, click on the location where you wish to establish the connection point.