Recommended literature for shapes development

[Tomislav]

Hello,

guess that most frustrating and seemingly pointless effort
in 12 years of experience with computers was searching for
appropriate literature ( manuals ) related to shapes development
in Visio. All I found were books with some basic shape development
and all other knowledge is scattered through global network
which becomes harder to search every day.

Is there any literature on the face of the Earth that covers
creating and managing complex and intelligent shapes like for instance
roads and similar traffic objects which can be downloaded freely ?

Or search engines are programmed differently to serve small countries ?

Thanks,

Tomislav

 

[Al Edlund]

you can try this, it's a great article by Saul Candib
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odc_vis2003_ta/html/OfficeVisioBuildingShapes.asp?frame=true
al

 

[John Marshall, MVP]

The standard book for shape development has been DVS (Developing Visio
Shapes, latter named Developing Visio Solutions, and Finally named
Developing Microsoft Visio Solutions). Currently it is available in two
forms as part of MSDN online and as book through Microsoft press. A 2003
version of the book was never released, so the one you will find will say
Visio 2002.

If you want a slightly different approach David Edson's Professional
Development with Visio 2000 is also good. It is dated, but the basis of
shape development and programming Visio has not changed in may versions. You
can also find articles by David or Chris Roth online that explain specific
details of shape development.

If you become totally fanatical about shape development, then one of Graham
Wideman's books is a must. His books builds on the information in DVS in far
more detail. To survive Graham's book, you NEED DVS.

More details about the books can be found at
http://visio.mvps.org/Information_Sites.htm

John... Visio MVP

Need stencils or ideas? http://visio.mvps.org/3rdparty.htm
Need VBA examples? http://visio.mvps.org/VBA.htm
Visio Wishlist http://visio.mvps.org/wish_list.htm

 

[John Marshall, MVP]

Visio does have a product called ShapeStudio that can be used to develop
Visio shapes. The article mentioned by Al is an explantion of how to use it.
You do not need to use ShapeStudio to create shapes, but it does have some
useful features for managing the creation of sets of shapes with similar
features.

If starting out, I would avoid ShapeStudio and first become familiar with
changing the Shapesheet from within Visio.

Either way, you will still need the informaiton from the books I mentioned
in the other message.

John... Visio MVP

Need stencils or ideas? http://visio.mvps.org/3rdparty.htm
Need VBA examples? http://visio.mvps.org/VBA.htm
Visio Wishlist http://visio.mvps.org/wish_list.htm