viziblr

In which shapes will receive a spotlight

Let's suppose you have the network diagram below.

And what you'd like to to provide a little extra attention on server A. For example to emphasize it's importance or status. Perhaps we wish to indicate it's in a "warning" state.

You could try setting the fill color ...

And that would work. But given the nice 3-point gradient used in the diagram, we want to go the extra mile and make highlight A in a more subtle manner. What we want is this:

And now we'll learn how to make a "glow" shape that you can use to highlight other shapes.

First, draw a rectangle, and right-click and select Format / Fill

The Fill dialog launches

for Pattern select 40 ( a radial fill(

Then for Color select Orange

Then for Fill Pattern select Orange

Then click OK.

Enable the shapesheet by going to Tools/Options/Advanced and selecting run in developer mode

Right click on Show Shapesheet and in the Fill Format section, change the FillBkgndTrans to 100%.

The shape will now look like this:

Get rid of the line ...

And now the shape will look like this:

Now place it above the background but underneath the server A shape and you get:

At this point, you've got a nice highlight effect. But we can do better. Leveraging the technique for the 3-point gradients, we are going to make a two color glow.

To help visualize the differences:

In the 2-color glow, we have the same orange color, but toward the center it gets progressively brighter to white.

NOTE: the 2-color glow is still 1 shape.

How to achieve this?

First, draw a 1-color glow using the color white.

Select that shape and choose Format / Shadow

In the Shadow dialog

• Set Style to 13: Offset, custom
• Set Color to orange (or whatever you want)
• Set Pattern to 40
• Set Pattern Color to orange (or whatever you selected for Color)
• Set the X Offset & Y Offset to 0 and 0
• Set Magnification to 170%

And close the Shadow dialog

You should see this:

Right click on the shape and select Show Shapesheet

And in the Fill Format section set ShdwBkgndTrans to 100%

And you will now have this

Which you can then use as a more intense highlight for Server A

Notice boundary of the shape.

Keep in mind that the orange glow is beyond the shape's selection area and is thus not selectable. You'll have to click on the "inner" glow. The picture below should make it clear.

Also, you can have fun with the glows to make some nice backgrounds.

A visio file with all the shapes is attached to this post.

A Question

How many shapes are required to draw the image below in Visio?

The Answer

5 shapes.

No groups, no wierd geometries. Just 5 shapes.

What I want

I want rich, smooth, multi-color gradient fills with independent transparencies for each color.

I could get what I want by drawing multiple shapes. That can work. But, sometimes it's irritating. The shapes have to be perfectly aligned, you'll have some selection wierdness, etc. Simpler to have 1 shape.

What is a  3-Point Gradient Fill with Transparency?

Before I show the steps. Let me give you a clearer understanding of what I mean.

First, here is a conceptual drawing the 3-point I really want to draw:

Now, without getting into the explanation, the gradient we'll be able to draw will be more like this:

So visualize it forming like this:

Implementing 3-Point Gradient Fill with Transparency

We are going to use a combination of the normal shape fills and the SHADOW feature to draw a 3-point gradient.

It's not perfect, it doesn't do everything you'd expect in an application like Illustrator, but I'm sure it's more than what you've seen with Visio so far.

Just so that the goal is clear: here is what we will end-up with:

• ORANGE in the upper left
• LIGHT BLUE in the upper-right
• DARK BLUE in along the bottom

Steps

• Launch Visio
• Create a new document
• Draw a rectangle

• Select the rectangle, right-click, and choose Format / Fill...

• The Fill dialog will appear

• Set the colors appropriately (pay attention)
• Set the Fill / Pattern to 36

• Set Fill / Color and FIll / Pattern Color to the color you want for the upper left (ORANGE)

• Don't touch the transparency for now
• Set the Shadow / Pattern to 28

• Set Shadow / Color to the color you want along the bottom of the shape (DARK BLUE)
• Set Shadow / Pattern Color to the color you want at the upper right of the shape (LIGHT BLUE)
• Click OK
• Here is what you have now

• Turn on the shape sheet via Tools / Options / Advanced / Run in developer mode and click OK to close the Tools / Options dialog

• Select the shape, right click, and select Show ShapeSheet
• Find the FIllBkgndTrans cell and change the value from 0% to 100%

• You'll notice the change in the shape once you finish making this change

• close the shapesheet window

• A closer look

• Select the shape
• Form the menu, select Format / Shadow ...

• The Shadow dialog launches

• Under the Size & Position section, click the black dot in the middle of all the arrows

• A close-up of the black dot to click

• Once you click the dot, the Shadow dialog will look like this

• NOTE: when you click on the black dot, the Shadow / Style changed to "13: Offset, custom" (this is expected)
• Click OK to close the Shadow dialog
• What we have created is a single shape with a three-point gradient.

• If you edit the fill and shadow transparencies, you can vary the transparencies as needed

That was hard, how can I create another one?

• Just duplicate the object and edit the colors in the Fill dialog to get what you want.

What about an existing shape? How can I copy the effect?

• Use the format painter button

How do I create the picture are the beginning of the post?

• Duplicate this shape 4 times for a total of five shapes.
• Resize and stack three on top of each other and modify the colors via the FIll dialog.
• Make the other two into vertical columns, set the colors and the transparencies
• Play with the patterns and transparencies. You'll get some nice combinations!

Summary

• A single shape that avoids selection weirdness and keep the file size manageable
• An easy way to change the colors
• Trivial to generate a different gradients, you only need to use the shapesheet the first time: Create this shape once, save it as a file, if you ever want another gradient just reload, duplicate, change colors via the UI as desired.

In which a Visio shape will be harmed ...

The Microsoft Visio Conference 2008 concluded this afternoon. The Visio team presented some exciting things for the next version. One thing I observed is that people have yet to exploit the full power of Vision 2007 with regard to create compelling visuals.

I'm going to spend some time trying to change that.

Today's topic: Transparent Gradients

Before I explain how, here's an example of the desired output: a shape with a gradient fill where the transparency changes from the start of the gradient to the end of the gradient.

What we want will look like this:

The shape in the middle is opaque on the left and transparent on the right.

I drew this shape using Xara. By the time, I'm finished here, you'll know how to do it in Visio 2007.

No Cheating

People sometimes employ a technique where a series of tiny shapes each with an gradually increasing amount of transparency are used to create a transparent gradient. That technique may be appropriate in some cases. It's completely unnecessary here and doesn't yield great visual results. I will not be using this technique. Instead, I'll do it "the right way".

The Instructions

• Launch Visio 2007
• Create a new drawing via File / New / New Drawing
• Insert a picture using Insert / Picture / From File ... . The only reason a picture is being inserted is to make it obvious that the gradient changes transparency from the beginning to the end.
• Resize the picture to fit within the Page

• Draw a rectangle over the picture.

• Create a new drawing via File / New / New Drawing
• On the rectangle, right-click and select Format / Fill ...
• The Fill Dialog will launch

• Set the Pattern to 25
• Set Color to blue
• Set Pattern Color to red

• Click OK
• The Fill dialog closes
• The fill of the rectangle will now have changed

• Select Tools / Options

• The Options dialog will launch

• Navigate to the Advanced tab
• Check Run in developer mode
• Click OK
• The Options dialog will close
• Right click on the rectangle and select Show ShapeSheet
• The ShapeSheet will open
• Navigate to the Fill Format section
• NOTE: FillBkgndTrans maps to the transparency of the "Pattern Color" in the Fill dialog
• Set the FillBkgndTrans to 100%.

• At this point it should be clear that the gradient has a beginning and end transparency.
• NOTE: Do not close the ShapeSheet (nothing bad will happen if you do, it will just make the next step more obvious)
• Let's look at more closely...

• Withthe ShapeSheet still up, right-lick onthe shape and select Format / Fill...
• The Fill dialog will launch

• Set both Color and Pattern Color to the white
• Do NOT change the Transparency value. It will lose the gradient transparency if you do so.

• Click OK
• The Fill dialog closes

• Close the shapesheet

• Remove the edge for the rectangle

• Look what we have created

Homework

• In the Fill dialog, change the fill pattern to achieve these effects

Tomorrow

Stay tuned. It gets better.