Microsoft Visio 2010 : Laying Out Shapes (part 2) - Using Visio’s Layout Features - Experimenting with Layout

Start a new diagram using the Network, Basic Network Diagram template.

Add a Server shape to the page and type Department Server for its text.

Drop Laptop Computer, Cell Phone, and PDA shapes on the page and type some descriptive text—for example, Cell phone and PDA.

Note that all these shapes are not on the same stencil, so you have to click the various stencil tabs to find them all.

Connect the Laptop to the Cell Phone and PDA. For this example, make sure that you connect from higher-level shapes to lower-level shapes.

Although networks don’t necessarily have a hierarchy like an org chart, think of connecting from the bigger piece of equipment to the smaller. This will help you to experiment with and understand Visio’s layout functions later on.

Connect the server to the laptop shape.

Duplicate the laptop, cell phone, PDA, and associated connectors several times. You can do this by selecting them all at once, copying and then pasting them repeatedly.

Connect the server to each of the new laptop shapes you created. Your diagram should look similar to Figure 6. Note the three groups of equipment, all connected to the server

Figure 6. A server haphazardly connected to three groups of employee equipment.

The connectors are drawn over the network equipment, so send them all to back. The network shapes have connection points on each side, plus one in the middle. It is easy to (accidentally) create point-to-point glue connections with these shapes (instead of dynamic glue). As a result, connectors might be on top of shapes, so the diagram looks sloppy. If you’ve created dynamic glue connections, you won’t have this problem.

a. Select all the connectors by clicking Home, Select, Select by Type.

b. Click Shape Role and check only Connectors.

c. Click OK. All the connectors in the page should be selected.

d. Send them to back by pressing Shift+Ctrl+B or using the button in the Home, Arrange group. All connectors should now be behind the network shapes.

Experiment with various layouts available in the layout gallery. On the Design tab, click the Re-layout Page drop-down button in the Layout group. Notice that as you mouse over each item in the gallery, Live Preview shows you how the new arrangement will look.

If you can’t see the different layouts very well, be sure to zoom out.

Try the Circular layout style. I think it shows this network very clearly, as you see in Figure 7.

Figure 7. The Circular layout style applied to the mini network.

Try the Hierarchy or Flowchart styles also. Notice that they have multiple choices for direction of flow. The Flowchart, Left to Right layout works nicely. It offers space for the text, and the text doesn’t overlap the connectors very much.

Save the diagram as Ch05 Layout.vsd so that you can use it in future examples.