Seeking opinion on automating a chart

[ehtoya]

We have an enormous Visio chart depicting numerous timelines, each
with scores of milestone shapes, plus many floating text boxes and a
large number of connectors between shapes on different timelines. The
data changes frequently, and new timelines and new milestones are
being added regularly. The chart is maintained manually, and is
extremely labor intensive. A great deal of the effort involves the
placement of connectors so they do not overlap other objects, and
deconflicting shape text - the text strings can be quite long and it
is a major challenge to adjust text so it does not overlap its
neighbors above, below, left, and right.

The chart is so large and intricate that, even when blown up to
maximum plotter size and hung as wallpaper, it is basically
incomprehensible and imparts no useful information. We have not been
able to convince our customer to take a different approach, such as a
summary level chart showing key events, with drilldown to whatever
level of detail is needed. The customer insists that this monster
chart is what they want to have.

I have been asked to look into trying to automate this beast, but am
frankly stumped. We have the basic chart info in a MSProject file, and
pulling that information and sticking it in a chart via code is
straightforward in principle, but how to place objects on the chart
and draw connectors in a way that does not require extensive manual
tweaking is beyond me.

Does anybody have any observations or suggestions as to the
practicality of attempting to automate this chart?

Thanks
Dave

 

[David Parker]

I have automated many large charts from Project using multiple timelines
combined with the cross-functional flowchart.
However, there may still be the need for some manual tweaking in the more
complex ones.