Visio – Creating Tapered Lines
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 9:07AM Sometimes you may want to have a line with a tapered width. It’s another interesting choice in showing the relationships between shapes. For example …
Unfortunately we seem stuck in a world where lines have constant width …
However, this is possible and actually very easy to do with Visio, but it is not obvious. Unfortunately it even became a little less obvious with Visio 2010
IF YOU PREFER TO WATCH – A SCREENCAST IS AVAILABLE
PREPARATION #1: LINE PROPERTIES AND DASH TYPE
Before we jump into the solution it will help to like at the properties of a line.
Right click on a line and select Format >Line …
The Line properties dialog will appear.
As you can see there are many properties we can control.
Look at Dash Type
Clearly this controls the dots and dashes in the line. What isn’t obvious is that it can control the overall shape of the line.
And this is how we will achieve the look of tapered lines. To summarize, we will create a new “dash type” that will have a tapered look and then apply that to the line.
PREPARATION #2: THE DRAWING EXPLORER
In order to create this new “dash type” we need use something called the Drawing Explorer. Below is what it looks like.
The trick is in knowing how to turn it on. It was very easy to do this in Visio 2007 but it got a bit harder in Visio 2010. But do not worry, it is not that difficult.
The command to enable the Drawing Explorer is in the Developer tab in the Ribbon. And of course we need to first learn how to enable the developer tab.
ENABLE THE DEVELOPER TAB IN THE RIBBON
Click on File in the ribbon
Then clock Options
And in the Visio Options window, under Main Tabs, simply enable the Developer tab and click OK.
And then you’ll see the Developer tab
AN ALTERNATIVE WAY TO ENABLE THE DEVELOPER TAB IN THE RIBBON
This is the more “traditional” way of doing it.
Click on File in the ribbon
Then click Options
And in the Visio Options window, under Advanced , simply enable the Run in developer mode option and click OK.
And then you’ll see the Developer tab
ENABLE THE DRAWING EXPLORER
In the Developer tab, enable Drawing Explorer
And the Drawing Explorer will now be visible
CREATE A NEW LINE PATTERN
NOTE: The “Dash style” you saw in the Line properties dialog corresponds to a “Line Pattern”
Give it a reasonable name, set the behavior to the third image (the half circle) and click OK
And now the new pattern appears in the drawing explorer
EDIT THE PATTERN’S SHAPE
Right click and select Edit Pattern Shape
A new page will open – and shapes you draw here will be the pattern for the line
For this example it’s useful to have a small perfectly square page.
Under the Design tab, select Size, then More Page Sizes…
In the Page Setup window, under the Page Size tab, set Custom size to 4in x 4 in
Now the page is a convenient size for this pattern
Select the Line tool
And draw 3 connected lines so that you have a triangle that looks like this
Remove the line
Change the fill to black
Don’t worry – you can override the color when you use this pattern lines. Black is just a good default to start with.
Close the page.
Click Yes to this message
USE THE PATTERN
All the hard work is done. We can now just use the pattern.
Draw a line and give it a decent weight (like 6 pt or above) and zoom in so you can see what is going to happen
Now open the line properties
And for Dash Type select Tapered line and click OK
And now you have a tapered line …
EXAMPLES
You can use this line pattern for normal lines and also for connectors.