Laying Out Office Spaces

Chapter at a Glance

Think of something biga house, an office building, or your backyard. Using Visio, you can diagram a large object on a small drawing page by use a drawing scale, which represents the relationship between the object's size in the real world and its size on the page. Like a map that depicts a 10-mile stretch of highway with a 1-inch line, a scaled diagram represents physical space and objects at a ratio or a fraction of their real size. A drawing scale isn't only for large objectsyou can draw very small objects, such as watch mechanisms or printed circuits, at a larger scale as well. When you start a Microsoft Office Visio diagram with a scaled template, Visio sets up the drawing scale that's appropriate for the drawing type, and the shapes on the stencils included with the template conform to the scale automatically when you drag them onto the drawing page.

Important

This chapter demonstrates creating a scaled office layout. However, you can use the methods in this chapter to create any kind of scaled building planno matter how big or small it is. Visio Professional 2007 includes scaled templates that you can use to create everything from warehouses or industrial plants to plans for a home.

In this chapter, you create the layout for an office and conference space for Wide World Importers. You work with the Office Layout template to first create the walls, and then you add door, window, and furniture shapes to the diagram. Last, you organize the shapes in the office layout on layers, which is an efficient method for managing and differentiating categories of shapes.

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

Important