The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Visio 5.0
Bernadette Houghton
 bernieh@iaccess.com.au

With software upgrades being issued at an ever-spiralling rate, I've been conscious of the need to get a prompt start on reviewing new programs - just in case a new version comes out before I've had time to finish my write-up. So, when I received a copy of Visio 5.0, my first and most overwhelming sensation was of relief - thank goodness I'd finished my review of Visio Technical 4.5 (PC Update, July 1997) in good time! As I write this, it's only August.

With the latest release, Visio International has brought the Visio product family into line. Visio Standard 5.0, Visio Technical 5.0 and Visio Professional 5.0 now have a common graphics engine. The Technical and Professional editions include the full functionality of the Standard edition, but have additional features targeting the engineering/technical and information technology markets respectively.


Figure 1. Visio Standard's main screen


Figure 2. Programming a SmartShape using a ShapeSheet

In case you're not already familiar with Visio, it is a 2D drawing program which relies primarily on the manipulation of intelligent, ready-made shapes called SmartShapes. However, it is much more than a simple graphics package. You can use Visio to design customised business solutions, linking your Visio drawings with spreadsheets and external databases to create fully integrated drawing systems. To give you some idea of Visio's potential, you could

  • Maintain an asset register by linking an inventory database to a Visio space plan
  • Update the inventory by adding or deleting shapes from the plan
  • Generate new Visio bolt shapes from a bolt specification database
  • Generate a material cutting list using drawing specifications (e.g. windows, doors, staircases)
  • Generate customer mail-outs when specified events occur (e.g. a shape is updated)
  • Quickly diagram crime or accident scenes.
I looked at a beta preview of the Visio family, as a copy of the final product (released mid-August 1997) was not yet available. I could easily use up a dozen or so pages of PC Update to explore Visio in depth. However, to spare readers' sensibility and save our Peter from the frustrating job of finding the space, I'll explain only how Visio works and skim the main features of the new releases.

How it works

Visio is very much a drag and drop drawing program. You create drawings by dragging SmartShapes from a series of stencils, then positioning, resizing, gluing and otherwise manipulating them. Shapes include not just traditional symbols, but also dimensions, scales, text, fills, line ends and so on. While Visio's emphasis is on pre-defined elements, you can also create your own shapes, or customise existing ones. The trade-off between Visio and normal CAD (computer-aided design) packages is that you can create diagrams in far less time with Visio, but creating custom shapes is a little trickier and more time-consuming. Visio comes with a large range of ready-made SmartShapes (1300+ in Visio Standard and 2000+ in Visio Technical and Visio Professional) and you can also purchase additional shapes and add-on products if you need them.


Figure 3. Programming SmartShape behaviour 
via a dialog box


Figure 4. The Shape Explorer

Unlike dumb symbols, SmartShapes behave intelligently when manipulated. Stretch a bolt in any direction, for example, and it resizes proportionally; stretch the tail of an arrow, and only the tail resizes. You control the behaviour and properties of SmartShapes by manipulating their control handles or programming their ShapeSheets. ShapeSheets are basically mini spreadsheets, and you establish relationships between shape properties by referencing cells just as you do in a normal spreadsheet. For example, you could link the length of a bolt to its width, or its colour to its dimensions to indicate whether the bolt meets acceptable tolerance levels.

You can store data within shapes, and extract and analyse the data using either Visio's Property Reporting Wizard or various development tools. Visio includes built-in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), full OLE 2.0 compatibility and support for Lotus Notes/FX and ODBC-compliant databases. Alternatively, you can customise your Visio work environment, create add-on programs and share information with other applications using stand-alone Visual Basic, C or C++.

Visio has a range of templates and Wizards to make drawing easier. Apart from the Property Reporting Wizard, some others are the

  • SmartShape Wizard, which helps you customise SmartShapes
  • Project Timeline Wizard, which generates timelines using external data files
  • Office Layout Wizard, which simplifies the process of setting up space plans.
New in Visio Standard 5.0

Apart from new SmartShapes for marketing and advanced flowcharting, there are several new and updated Wizards. The Database Wizard is faster, with new custom property types and support for additional ODBC drivers. The Database Export Wizard exports ShapeSheet data into databases. The Organisation Chart Wizard creates charts automatically from ODBC-compliant databases, and the Property Reporting Wizard writes data associated with shapes to a spreadsheet. The new Shape Explorer searches for and catalogues SmartShape symbols available either on your computer or Visio's Web site.

If you use Microsoft Outlook, Visio can automatically record the time you spend working on your Visio drawings in the Outlook Journal. There is support for Open Document Management Architecture (ODMA) and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4. Internet tools include hyperlinking more consistent with the Microsoft implementation and more precise hot link boundaries.


Figure 5. Visio's Technical's main screen


Figure 6. Visio's Technical's Valve Builder

A full screen preview mode, toolbars compatible with Office 97, tabbed dialogs, simplified menus and simpler page resizing, help to make Visio easier to use. Dynamic-routing connectors respond intelligently to shape movements and "jump" when they cross other connectors. Shapes now include custom fill patterns, line ends and line patterns. You can glue 2D shapes to multiple guides and change their dimensions by moving the guides. Import/export support includes WMF, CorelDraw 7, and Visio will display DWG and DXF files as embedded objects.

New developer features include builtin Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), support for Active X controls, in-place editing of embedded objects, named connectors and new automation methods and events, including a new ShapeSheet function, CALLTHIS.

New in Visio Technical 5.0

Visio Technical's new SmartShapes cover facilities management, automation and building security and process plant design. There is also a range of parametrically driven mechanical shapes from EMT Software, including a database with geometry definitions for commonly used mechanical parts.

New tools included

  • Area Analysis, to calculate floor areas
  • Valve Builder, to help you create pneumatic and hydraulic valve shapes
  • Netlist Generator, to generate a list of components, connections or nodes and component values for electrical circuits.
N etlist also creates a SPICE (Simulation Program for Integrated Circuits Emphasis) input file from a Visio drawing.

When importing AutoCAD drawings, you can now control layers, scaling and display of named views, and there are 45 new unscaled AutoCAD-compatible hatch patterns and line types. Two new drawing commands - Move and Offset - are available only in the Technical edition.

New in Visio Professional 5.0

Visio Professional's new SmartShapes include vendor-specific networking shapes (3Com, Bay Networks, Cabletron, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard) and shapes for the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Object Role Modelling language. There is a UML Semantics Checker Wizard and an updated Web Diagram Wizard which supports frames and can handle a wider range of HTML codes. Support is added for the Microsoft Repository storage system.

Assessment

Although I looked only at a beta preview of the three Visio products, I found them surprisingly robust for pre-release programs. Most features were fully operational and although there were a few bugs and loose ends, I didn't experience any crashes.

Apart from their obvious value as quick diagramming tools, the Visio family of products offer great potential for businesses to integrate their drawing operations. Visio particularly addresses the situation where drawings are linked to database specifications or reports are based upon the elements of a drawing. You can create complex diagrams in a fairly short time and, of course, there is a much shorter learning curve.

Visio's biggest drawback, as I see it, is that many actions, which are simple and straightforward with other drawing programs, are much more complicated using Visio. For instance, creating new shapes from scratch takes longer, and to create macros and customise menus and toolbars, you have to use VBA. Some tools lack intuitiveness and behave in a non-standard manner; however, it is basically a matter of getting used to them. As you can see in the screen shots, Visio's default screens are very cluttered in the beta preview, but this is a minor detail. It is easy to hide toolbars you don't wish to display.

As for the question of whether Visio is a worthwhile upgrade this time around - it depends a lot, of course, upon which version you are currently using. Some of the "new" features in Visio Standard were available in Visio Technical 4.1 and 4.5, for instance.

Reasons to consider Visio
  • Your drawings use mostly pre-defined symbols
  • You work with CAD diagrams created by others
  • You wish to integrate your drawing and database/spreadsheet package.
On the other hand, if you need to create complex drawings from scratch, look elsewhere.

Reprinted from the October 1997 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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