Visio

References

• Visio Stencils for UML / SysML

Tips

• Making Shapes More Efficient: Using Fewer Shapes & Groups
• Text Resizing with ShapeSheet Formulas
  • The correct way to scale Font Size or Line Weight when the shape is resized

Tips

Tips from SoftwareStencils

From VisioUML2.2Tips.pdf (from [1])

• Click Tools, Snap & Glue and place check marks in the Glue and Shape Vertices check boxes.  

In Visio 2010, Go to View ribbon → Visual Aids (small arrow) → Enable Snap to shape vertices and Glue to shape vertices

• To have an invisible line of connection points, use the Region, Partition shape, and select Connection Points line in the contextual menu.

Restore styles in Visio 2010

• Enable Developer Mode. See http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/visio-help/what-happened-to-styles-HA010215441.aspx.

Apparently this only enables themes in Visio 2010, styles are still hidden

• Add styles button by customizing the ribbon (from Commands not in the Ribbon).

Custom line patterns (wavy, saw edge...)

Show the Drawing Explorer (see [2]):

• In ribbon Developer menu → Show/Hide → Drawing Explorer

Create a new pattern:

• In Drawing Explorer, right click Line Patterns → New Pattern...
• Right click on the new pattern → Edit Pattern Shape

See VisLog's Creating Random

See also the Visio Guy, and MSDN (visio.10)

Miscellaneous

• Use Shift + Mouse wheel to scroll page horizontally.
• Press F11 to got to text/fonts properties
• To get transparent text background in an arrow, edit the text, then go to extended Font/Text properties dialog, and select pane Text Block.

New features

Auto-size

See [3]

Troubleshoot

Can't see eccentricity handles on arc shape

Problem — According to MS help, if you click on the control point of an arc with the pencil tool, while holding the CTRL key, you will see the arc's eccentricity handles.

Solution ([4]) — Resize the height or width or the shape with the pointer tool (CTRL+1), the re-select the bow point with the pencil tool. The eccentricity handles should appear.

Solution 2 — Open the ShapeSheet, find the EllipticalArcTo corresponding to the segment, and change the value in the D column (set 1 or so).

Copy/paste in Powerpoint add small surrounding boxes

When pasting visio drawing using Picture (Extended Metafile), small surrounding box appears around some text boxes (usually in presentation mode).

Somes work-around:

• Use transparent background for shape with no border instead of white background
  • To remove background from label, edit label, then Fonts (F11) → Text block → Text background = None
• Paste as Windows Metafile (wmf) instead of Enhanced Metafile (emf)