Adding Shapes to Diagrams

Chapter at a Glance

Microsoft Office Visio includes tens of thousands of shapes that you can use to quickly create diagrams. Shapes in Visio can represent both conceptual graphics and real-world objects, such as office furniture and network equipment. Shapes can be as simple as a rectangle that represents a step in a process flowchart, or they can be as complex as a hub in a network diagram. Because shapes can represent real-world objects, you can interact with them in ways that are similar to the ways you interact with the real-world objects.

All Visio shapes include handles that you can drag to resize the shapes. Visio shapes are smart; that's what sets them apart from shapes in other programs and clip art.

As you add shapes to your diagrams, you'll need to arrange them on the drawing page. For instance, in a flowchart, you might move one shape at a time, but in an office layout, you might need to move all the shapes at once.

You can also add titles to your diagrams or labels to your shapes by simply typing the text you want to add. You can customize the appearance of your diagram by modifying the text and shape attributes. If you can't find the shape you need on the stencils associated with the template, you can find shapes on other stencils or on the Web. In addition, you can insert a picture, such as a company logo or a piece of clip art, from another program into your Visio diagram.

In this chapter, you'll work with a block diagramone of the most commonly used diagram types in Visiothat uses simple box and arrow shapes to represent the layout of a tradeshow hosted by Wide World Importers. You'll learn how to work with different types of shapes, add text to shapes, move and size shapes, rotate and copy shapes, and otherwise modify the appearance of shapes. Last, you'll learn how to search for shapes you can use to create diagrams and insert pictures from other programs into your diagrams.

Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries on pages xxvxliii.

Important