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

Other

• Draw.io — free online alternative to Visio. Very powerful, and can be integrated into many applications.

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.

Survival tips in Visio 2013

Set measurement units to mm

• In the ribbon, go to Design pane. Click on the tiny arrow thingy in group Page Setup. In the dialog box, go to pane Page Properties, and select Millimeters for option Measurement units.

Disable the automatic grid

• Automatic grid changes automatically the step of the grid when zooming in and out, which makes it very difficult to align objects at different zoom level.
• To disable, go to View, then click on the small box/arrow thingy Show in group, then set Grid spacing to Fixed, and set the Minimum spacing value.

Show the size & position task pane

• Visio lets you give the size/position of any object manually, but the GUI element to do this is well hidden. It is in fact called a Size & Position task pane.
• To show the Size/Position Task Pane, go to View, click on arrow under Task Panes, and select Size & Position.

Show advanced text properties dialog

• In Visio 2010 and previous versions, advanced text properties were simply accessible with a right mouse click. Using this dialog was necessary for instance to change the background padding of text block.
• To access the dialog again, go to Home, then click on the small box/arrow thingy in Font group.

Stop connector rerouting madness

• You drop / move an object, then an unrelated connector moves? You move a group, and suddenly connectors are rerouted? You can stop this madness.
• Click on the connector(s), go to Developper tab, click Behavior, go to Connector pane, change Reroute property (Freely, As needed, On crossover, Never).

Increase Snap to Grid Strength to force snap to grid

• The default snap to grid strength is not strong enough, and often times we end up aligning objects on something else than the grid. By increasing the strength, we increase the likely hood that all points are aligned to the grid (inspired from [3])
• To change the strength, go to View, then click on the small box/arrow thingy Visual Aids in group, then click on Advanced tab. Set Grid snap strength to 30 (default value is 5).

Enable Developper mode in Ribbon

1. On the File tab, click Options, and then in the navigation pane, click Customize Ribbon.
2. In the Main Tabs pane, click to select the Developer check box, and then click OK.

New features

Auto-size

See [4]

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 ([5]) — 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)