Brainstorming: Custom Shapes? and importing outlines?

[Dawud]

From using Visio for 1 day, it appears that you cannot
apply custom shapes to main topics in the brainstorming
module. Is this true, did I just miss something, why
would that be?

Also, can you, or why can't you, import an outline from
Word or from a simple text file for use in the Outline
window?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Thanks for checking Visio out. If you right click on the main topic shape,
you can choose Change Topic Shape. This gives you a limited set of
alternatives. If you want something entirely different, you would need to
replicate the Shapesheet cells of the topic shape - a fairly involved task
that requires some understanding of shape construction.

As for importing an outline, we couldn't squeeze that feature in. You can
use the Multiple topic shape to paste a bunch of information at once. The
limitation is that you must work one level at a time.

 

[Dawud]

Thanks for your earlier reply (attached below). My follow-
up questions are:

1) Where can I get information on "shape
construction"; I reviewed the topic shapesheet, I can see
it's a bit involved. Can you only construct vector
shapes; no bitmaps shapes as a topic shape?

2) Will future versions of Visio likely provide for
importing outlines? Related to this feature, I'm trying
to create "dynamic" brainstorming diagrams (mind-maps)
from outline data I have (and keep changing) in Access.
Is this possible? I tried exporting the Access file in
XML format with the schema included in the export, but
Visio fails to import the XML file claiming it doesn't
have the proper schema. Is this approach going to solve
my problem and if so what am I doing wrong?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks much!

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Yes, shape construction can be involved if you are trying to create a new
shape that emulates other shapes. Your best resource is a book called
Developing Microsoft Visio Solutions. It is available free in online form
as part of the Visio 2003 SDK. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/visio for
more info. The book starts by describing shape construction and then moves
into programmatically controlling Visio drawings.

Visio has the ability to connect to databases, but you may also want to
write some code to do this yourself. It too early to say what features
Visio will provide in the future. Visio 2003 was released just last
October.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your earlier reply (attached below). My follow-
up questions are:

1) Where can I get information on "shape
construction"; I reviewed the topic shapesheet, I can see
it's a bit involved. Can you only construct vector
shapes; no bitmaps as a graphic for a topic shape?
2) Will future versions of Visio likely provide for
importing outlines? Related to this feature, I'm trying
to create dynamic brainstorming diagrams (mind-maps) from
outline data I have (and keep changing) in Access. Is
this possible? I export the Access file in XML format
with the schema included in the export, but Visio fails
to import the XML file claiming it doesn't have the
proper schema. Is this approach going to solve my problem
and if so what am I doing wrong?

Your assistance again is greatly appreciated. Thanks much!