The 2003 edition of the Visio Bible

---

Product Description

* Providing comprehensive coverage of Visio's large feature set for technical and engineering professionals, the book begins with a quick introduction to the intuitive interface
* This book quickly moves into the specialized stencils, shapes, and templates used in software and network design and documentation, engineering disciplines, and project management
* Features strong coverage of Visio's tight integration with other Microsoft Office products and as well as its interoperability with related products from other vendors, including AutoCad
* Explores how users in various fields can customize Visio with add-ons to meet their specific needs
* The author is a structural engineer and Visio user with twenty years of experience in project management

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83488 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

From the Back Cover
If Visio 2003 can do it, you can do it, too...

Whether you’re designing a network, a business model, or an office building, Visio 2003 helps you transform your vision into something tangible. This comprehensive reference teaches you to use this powerful combination of simple concepts and straightforward tools. You’ll discover new features of Visio 2003; how to integrate Visio drawings into other applications; how to use and customize specialized templates, stencils, and shapes; how Visio works with Office 2003 and AutoCAD®; and much more.

Inside you’ll find complete coverage of Visio 2003

• Learn to use the new features of both Visio Standard and Visio Professional
• Produce diagrams by creating and editing shapes and connectors, then refine them with text and formatting tools
• Dynamically update Visio drawings based on data stored in other applications
• Document flowcharts, business processes, project scheduling, and brainstorming sessions
• Explore the modeling tools available with the UML Model template and develop different types of UML diagrams
• Map existing Web sites and create conceptual diagrams
• Use Visio’s Space Plan template to manage facilities as well as to plan space
• Create custom collections of built-in shapes, including any you’ve modified and custom shapes you’ve developed

About the Author
Bonnie Biafore is an author as well as a project management consultant. As a consultant, she enjoys working with different clients and the diversity of projects she experiences, from CAD systems for structural steel fabrication to speech-enabled applications for telephone service field technicians and systems to manage hydroelectric power. While she’s sometimes tough on her clients, she is a far worse taskmaster for herself.
Bonnie has written several books, including Troubleshooting Microsoft Project 2002 (Microsoft Press) and The NAIC Stock Selection Handbook (NAIC). Since August 2000 she has been writing for Better Investing magazine a monthly column called Web Watch, which delves into the use of the World Wide Web for investing and how to develop good investing habits and smart and safe computer practices.
She is well known for her clear explanations of technical topics, whether it’s the inscrutable workings of computer software or the enigma of high finance. She applies her education from MIT and Columbia University to digest technical topics and then puts her organizational skills and humor to work to present material that engages beginners and experts alike.
Her education and work experience make her the ideal author for this Visio book. With a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and a Master of Science in Structural Engineering, she is well versed in using Visio for architecture and engineering and integrating it with CAD applications. As a project manager and consultant, she constantly applies Visio to office productivity problems. As a software project manager and application developer, she has also used Visio to document databases, software systems, and networks. As an engineer, she is fascinated with both the simplicity and power of Visio and enjoys experimenting with its customization and automation features.

---

Customer Reviews

Boy, this sure opened my eyes!
I just had my eyes opened to all that Visio can do by reviewing the book Visio 2003 Bible by Bonnie Biafore (Wiley).

Chapter list: Getting Started with Visio; Getting Started with Drawings; Working with Visio Files; Working with Shapes; Connecting Shapes; Working with Text; Formatting Visio Elements; Inserting, Linking, and Embedding Objects; Importing, Exporting, and Publishing Visio Data to the Web; Linking Shapes with Data; Collaborating with Others; Building Block Diagrams; Constructing Charts and Graphs; Working with Organization Charts; Working with Flowcharts; Documenting Business Processes; Scheduling Projects with Visio; Documenting Brainstorming Sessions; Modeling and Documenting Databases; Building UML Models; Building Software Development Diagrams; Mapping Web Sites; Creating Network Diagrams; Working with Scaled Drawings; Creating Scaled Plan Drawings; Laying Out Architectural and Engineering Plans; Integrating CAD and Visio; Working with Engineering Drawings; Creating and Customizing Templates; Creating and Customizing Stencils; Creating and Customizing Shapes; Customizing Shapes Using ShapeSheets; Formatting with Styles; Customizing Toolbars and Menus; Automating Visio; Installing Visio 2003; Visio 2003 Help Resources; Additional Resources for Templates and Stencils; Keyboard Shortcuts; Template and Stencil Reference; Index

As you can tell, there's not much left to cover after Bonnie gets done. :-)

As an IT professional, I've used Visio for the basics. Someone wants a flowchart, I can fake my way through a decent looking diagram. And that was pretty much all I thought Visio could do... basic drawings. But going through this book was an eye-opener. I didn't know that you could output Visio output for the web. I didn't know you could hook shapes up to data sources. And I *really* didn't know that Visio could produce a site map of a web site! Guess what I'll be trying at work tomorrow...

The author does a great job of covering the material at a level that everyone can understand. Due to the comprehensive nature of the book, I think that all levels of users can get something from the book, too. Those who are new to Visio will get a good foundation in the basics. Those (like me) who haven't explored past the basics will discover all sorts of new toys. And experts may find a feature or two that they didn't know about.

Definitely a keeper that will end up on my bookshelf at work, and one that I'll have to guard against greedy fingers...

This book was written for a programmer.
I am a programmer myself who didn't paid too much attention to MS Visio previous to my encounter with this book. Like the previous poster, I can "wink" my way through Visio for a fairly decent drawings, part of the reason for this is because I have worked with programs like Corel, Photoshop, video editing programs, Dream Weaver, Flash, etc, where I had to worked with various drawing tools, layers, rulers, zoom etc. Then suddenly I was offered a nice job with a well known IT company, and the position requires me to use MS Visio extensively.

I bought the MS Visio inside out first, but quickly found the book boring and uninspiring. So I returned the inside out book and bought this one ... Boy, am I glad I did.

I read a few pages and was completely sold. First, the author's writing style makes studying this dry subject very exciting. Secondly, She used terms I can relate as a programmer, for example, she refers to shapes in stencils as masters (hint: Classes), and a copied of the shape as instances (hint: inherited objects), behaviors as methods etc. For example, the MS Inside Out book note that shapes are powerful and smart (you would think to yourself: how smart?). This book relates shapes to classes, and we programmers know how powerful classes can be: they are the foundation to object oriented programming designs. Here's an example of how powerful classes can be: we programmers know that in designing any serious projects, we should never work with base classes, rather we should create our own classes by inherit from the base classes we need (thus creating a layer on top of the bass class while preserving essentially the same functionality). This approach is fairly common in FoxPro programming but equally applies to the .NET platform as well. The power comes in when we have to make changes to the base objects ... any changes make to them will filter down the chain to all the child objects. Thus, say your boss wants you to flowchart the whole business process using MS Visio and he wants all the shapes colored gray, then next month, he wants you to change all your shapes to light blue. Well, if you created your objects using the base classes, you are stuck; however, if you created another layer on top of your base layer in your design, it would only take you minutes to deliver the revised project to your boss. This is power.

So far so good, I will add to this review after I dig into the text some more.

Another too much and too little guide book.
As is usual with books purporting to enlighten you on the use of software, this book covers a great many subjects. The problem is, there is not enough depth on any of the subjects to help much if you are already a user of the program. If you have a detailed question, the likelihood is you will not find the exact subject addressed or if it is, the coverage is perfunctory. For example, the material on Gantt charts is less detailed than you will find in the help menu, so why bother with the book? If you have advanced far enough on your own to ask this type of question, chances are you won't find the answer either place.
On the other hand, if you are the type who is reluctant to just dive into a program and start figuring out how to use it on your own and want a guide, the sheer volume of material in this book will impede rather than help.