Microsoft Visio 2013 Part A

This is the first installment in a blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. Visio comes in 2 versions, standard which does any kind of ordinary drawing but has less templates and professional which lets you link outside pages to your drawing and is a much more heavy duty version complete with a whopping 76 templates. For most people the standard version is fine but the version we are doing in these lessons is professional. Visio is a chart creating tool with drawing and some CAD abilities. Most of your designs will be done at least in part using the shapes and stencils templates. This program has a ribbon much like Microsoft Office 2007 but like 2010 has a back end where if you click File there is a menu but also a whole page of options including settings for setting up the program the way you want. Show/ Grid displays a grid which was shown by default in earlier versions and there is still rulers by default to help place work. If you right click the status bar you can select and deselect toolbars and whether they are shown. Pressing escape brings you back to the standard view although you may have to press it more than once. If you double click on what is being drawn it will fill the page. The stencils and shapes templates are on right of the screen and you can drag and drop these and there is an alignment point surrounding the template to help position it. There are diagonal points to help resize it. Some commands are context sensitive meaning they change according to what work you are doing. Live Preview if you hover over a button temporarily shows the results of pressing it. There is a zoom button complete with pop ups at the bottom of the screen. The one you will use most is zoom extents which shows the full drawing on the workspace.  Pressing the control+ shift + w keys is a short cut to zoom extents. The scroll button on the mouse moves you up and down the screen. If you select a shape with the mouse you can add text to it in a default way. Pressing the control button and using the scroll wheel zooms in and out. Pressing View/ Dynamic Grid turns the alignment line on a selected shape on and off. Finally pressing control + clicking shapes lets you select at one time. I will try and do a 2nd installment later on tonight.