Creating Depth in Visio Shapes (Part 2)

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Showing depth and transparancey in VisioThis is the second in a series of articles about techniques for creating realistic depth in Visio shapes. Part 1 discussed how to create a metallic panel with edges that curve back and away from the plane of view. In this part we will show you how to insert a “window” into that same panel by using Visio operations called Subtract and Fragment. Then we’ll make it transparent like a real …Continue reading

Creating Depth in Visio Shapes (Part 1)

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Showing depth and transparancey in Visio

Visio is a 2D drawing program and creating the illusion of depth can really help your graphics pop out and make them look more realistic. Of course, Visio provides some basic features such as shadows but if you want to make objects appear as if they have real depth, we have some simple techniques to help you do that. Visimation uses these and other methods to create the photo-accurate …Continue reading

Tripp Lite Uses Visio Graphics for Publications

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Tripp Lite Visio shape of a cooling unitThe best way to extend the value of any asset is to use it and re-use if for multiple purposes. This goes for Visio shapes just as well as any other type of content such as images, text articles, etc.

We produce Visio shapes for Tripp-Lite, a leading manufacturer of products that power, connect and protect computers and other electronics. While Visio is a 2-dimensional drawing program, it …Continue reading

Free Visio People Stencil

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Visio shape created from MS Office clipartIn our previous post we discussed how to embellish your Visio drawings with clipart… you’re not restricted to the stencils that Visio provides. We’ve created a FREE Visio People stencil that you can download from www.shapesource.com by clicking on the image below. You’ll be asked to open an account so that we can manage your download but don’t worry… we won’t share your information with any other parties.

As explained in our previous article, you can access …Continue reading

Highlight Your Visio Diagrams with Clipart

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Sample from the free People stencilAt Visimation we often receive requests to produce compelling diagrams for work or information flows. Of course we could simply use the stencils included with Visio, but we can do much better by adding other eye-catching graphics to provide more information in an attractive way.

So today we’re going to discuss how to spruce up your Visio diagrams with various kinds of graphics that are easily obtainable. We’ve also …Continue reading

Tips About Visio Connection Points

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Connecting Visio shapesOne of Visio’s most helpful features is the ability to snap and glue objects together with Connection Points. These are the little blue “x” symbols that you can see on many pre-made Visio shapes that come with the product or from other sources such as www.ShapeSource.com. Here we’ll discuss how to insert additional connection points in Visio shapes that you have downloaded or created yourself. While the basic operation is quite simple, we’ll explain what to watch out for so …Continue reading

Customizing the Title Block in Visimation QuotePix

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QuotePix report in Excel

Many technical drawings require a title block. There are various ways to construct a title block and to automate its contents. We’ll discuss some useful methods in the context of one of our Visio add-ons.

Visimation’s QuotePix Visio add-on generates bill of materials (BOM) reports from your Visio drawings such as the adjacent sample. It has many task-easing features such as a BOM window that dynamically shows quantities …Continue reading

Using Visio Graphics in Other Applications

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Microsoft PowerPoint file containing vector .emf images

Vector .emf images in PowerPoint

We are often asked how to use the rich Visio shapes produced at Visimation in other applications such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, etc. There are several ways to do this. First, we’ll discuss how Visimation has made it very easy. Then, we’ll explain what to expect when you copy and paste manually from Visio into other programs.

…Continue reading

Free Xbox 360 Visio Stencil

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Xbox 360 Visio ShapesWe’ve created a Microsoft Xbox 360 shape that you can download free from ShapeSource.com. It’s a useful demonstration of the quality and features of Visio network equipment shapes produced by Visimation. There are 4 master shapes on the stencil: Front, Rear, Perspective, and All. The All shape provides a right click menu for toggling between the 3 views. We did this to show a couple of options… separate master shapes for each view or one master containing all views.

The …Continue reading

Architectural Site Plans with Visio

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Barry Milliken is a practicing Registered Architect with extensive computer aided design (CAD) experience. He uses Visio for most of his design work because it’s an easy and cost effective 2D graphics program. Barry created a custom solution for drawing site plans in Visio and has partnered with Visimation to offer it as a Visio add-on product called visiSitePlan.

VisiSitePlan contains several stencils with intelligently programmed shapes that automate a variety of drawing tasks. The beauty of using Visio for these kinds of plans is that you can more easily create very colorful …Continue reading