Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Three Visio Tips: Special Deliverables #4

by Dan Brown on 2002/08/19 | [16 Comments]

No column on information architecture deliverables would be complete without at least some mention of tools. Occasionally I will use this space to provide helpful suggestions on using some of the tools adopted by information architects. In this case, I’ll offer three tips on using Visio, Microsoft’s diagramming application. (Michael Angeles has already written an excellent article on Visio automation.)

Whether you love it or hate it, if you are an information architect you will probably find yourself using Visio at some point in your career. When that time comes, these three tips on styles, backgrounds and the F4 key will be indispensable.

Styles and Formats
Visio, while offering a lot of flexibility in applying styles to shapes, does not do much to help users understand the distinction between Style and Format. While they are inextricably related, they refer to different things. To help you distinguish, consider this table:

Text
	Font
	Size
	Style
	Color
Fill
	Fill Pattern
	Fill Color 1
	Fill Color 2
Line
	Line Pattern
	Line End
	Line Start
	Line Weight
	Corners
	Color

Each of these attributes describes one aspect of the “style” of a Visio shape.

Thus, for the above shape, I could fill in the table like this:

Text
	Font	Arial
	Size	12pt
	Style	Bold
	Color	White
Fill
	Fill Pattern	Checkerboard
	Fill Color 1	White
	Fill Color 2	Black
Line
	Line Pattern	Dotted
	Line End	None
	Line Start	None
	Line Weight	4pt
	Corners	Square
	Color	Red

All of the information in the table constitutes the shape’s “style.” “Format,” on the other hand, refers to the attributes of the text, fill or line components of the shape (i.e., the right column of the table). Format will always be qualified with one of these components of a shape. You could never talk about a “shape’s format.” You could, however, talk about a shape’s line format, a shape’s fill format or a shape’s text format.

The relationship between Style and Format now becomes straightforward: a shape’s style is the sum of its text, fill and line formatting. This becomes important when you select a shape’s style from the Style menu. In doing so, you affect the format of the text, line and fill of the shape. (Actually, you can define a style with one, two or all three of these formats specified, but the default styles in Visio include all three.)

A confusing aspect of the Style feature is that Visio offers a style menu for each of these shape components. I can select a shape and then select a style from the Text Style menu. When a style selected from the Text Style menu includes formatting for fill and line, you might get this prompt:

Visio is asking whether you want to style the shape with the fill and line formatting as well as the text formatting. It’s asking, in other words, if you’d like to apply the formatting to all the attributes defined by the selected style, or just to the text.

Backgrounds and Text Fields
By creating a background, you can carry common elements through several pages in a single Visio document. Visio allows you to define many backgrounds, and you can assign any one background to any foreground page.

To create a background, select “Page…” from the Insert menu. You’ll be presented with the page properties dialog box:

Be sure to select “Background” under Type and give your background a meaningful name. In Visio, backgrounds are pages in the document. They do not get printed, however, like regular pages.

When you click OK, you’ll see a blank Visio page. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll use the background to put my name in the lower right-hand corner of every page in the document.

Now, to put the background to use, create another page with Insert > Page… This time, however, the page type should be ”Foreground.” Be sure to give this page a meaningful name as well, since we’ll be using it later. To apply our background to the page, select its name from the Background menu.

Now, when you click OK, you’ll see a new page with my name at the bottom.

Backgrounds can be particularly powerful in combination with Text Fields. A text field is a variable space in a text area that Visio automatically fills in depending on the type of field you specified. For example, you could use a Date text field to automatically fill in the date.

When a text field appears on a background, it will draw its information from the foreground page assigned to it. This is particularly useful if you’d like the page name or page number to appear on every page.

To do this, create a text area on a background page. In the text area, insert a text field for “page name.” Then, any foreground page with that background assigned to it will show the page name. Here are the particulars:

Text field selection box. Click image to view larger version.

Return to the background page you created by clicking on the tab in the lower left corner of the Visio window. Create a new text area on the page. While the cursor is blinking in the new text area, select “Field…” from the Insert menu. (If the cursor isn’t blinking in the text area, you will not be able to select “Field…” from the Insert menu.) You will be presented with the Text Field selection dialog box.

Visio offers an enormous selection of text fields to choose from. To stick with the example, we’ll use the page name. That field is categorized under “Page Info.”

Page info. Click image to view larger version.

Note how Visio gives you the opportunity to format the text field. This is particularly relevant to date and time fields.

Now the page name appears. Because we’re still editing the background, you’ll see the name of the background page. Switching to the page we created previously, however, shows that the text field automatically changes depending on the page.

You can see why it is important to give pages relevant and meaningful names. By combining backgrounds and text fields, it is easy to create professional-looking deliverables while minimizing the chance of sloppy mistakes through typos or missing information.

F4
I love F4. I discovered this little trick reading an article on Visio.com before it was merged into Microsoft’s site. The F4 key is Visio’s keyboard shortcut for the “Repeat” command found in the “Edit” menu.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. In many Windows applications, this command is represented by the shortcut Ctrl-Y. In many applications, Ctrl-Y is a shortcut for the “Redo” command, an undo for the “Undo” command. In other words, if you undo something and change your mind, you can hit Ctrl-Y and it will take your work back to the state prior to the Undo command.

Visio’s F4 is different. In fact, if you do an Undo, the menu command changes to Redo and the keyboard shortcut becomes Ctrl-Y.

Hitting F4 means, “Repeat the last command I issued.” One use of the Repeat command is to apply formatting to several shapes at once. To do this:

1. Select a shape.
2. Change the format of the shape (for example, line weight).
3. Select other shapes, holding Ctrl to select more than one.
4. Press F4.

You’ll see the shapes you selected adopt the same formatting. This feature is limited in that the Repeat command repeats only the most recent command given. Try this experiment:

1. Select a shape.
2. Change the line weight of the shape.
3. Change the color of the line.
4. Select other shapes, holding Ctrl to select more than one.
5. Press F4.

Instead of adopting both the new weight and color of the line, the other shapes will only adopt the new color.

Visio offers a number of other techniques for applying the same style across many shapes (styles, layers and the Format Painter tool, among others) and F4 is not necessarily the best choice in all situations. The real value in F4 is its ability to repeat a duplication action.

After duplicating a shape, pressing F4 will create another duplication of the shape in the exact same relative position. The best way to describe this is to show it.

I can create a square and duplicate it by holding the Ctrl key and dragging the square to a new position. The top left corner of the duplicate is one-eighth of an inch lower and to the right of the bottom right corner of the original.

Now, by pressing F4, I can create a second duplicate whose relative position matches that of the first duplicate.

If I press F4 again, a third duplicate appears, also in the same relative position.

And so on.

This technique is useful for positioning objects consistently across a drawing, and for creating grids of objects. To create the grid below, I selected a column of text boxes, duplicated them with Ctrl-drag, and then pressed F4 to make each additional column.

Regardless of which party you fall into – Visio naysayer or Visio supporter – these tricks can help make your experience with the application more efficient. Visio is filled with tricks like these, but these three are among my favorites and the ones I use most often to get the job done. I hope you’ll use the discussion area for this article to post your own Visio tricks.

In the next column, we’ll compare the standards available for creating information architecture documentation, and help you decide which standard is right for you. (If you have suggestions for standards I should look at, please drop me a line!)