You can then add connection points, Shape Data fields, and other Visio Smart Goodies to the shapes.įor the Crayon Network shapes, we’ve added four connection points to aid in connecting the shapes to each other. It’s just a matter of importing them into Visio. That is when I decided that keeping this stencil set to myself and my circle of friends was not the right thing to do, since I am 100% sure I am not the only one who feels like he is explaining simple concepts to people with a 3rd grade mentality.ĭon took advantage of the fact that bitmaps and images can be turned into Visio shapes. I also have requests to add Citrix Servers and Virtual Servers, but not sure how to do those creatively (yet) 🙂 Oddly enough, the passive-aggressive approach was well-received by my manager…but I’m sure I’ll see the diagram again in my next performance review.īased on feedback (and requests) I kept adding shapes until I ended up with 22 so far. But the point that was made was well worth it. So, I actually took a 15 minute task, and turned it into a few hours of work. The initial prototype got a lot of laughs in the office, and from friends that I sent it to. Then I created a new Stencil in Visio, imported the graphics and copied them over to master shapes. After an hour of no luck, I stopped being lazy and created my own, using a crayon brush in Adobe Fireworks, and free-handing it with my mouse. This irritation did not go away, so I went online to for Visio Stencils drawn in crayon. When I was told about the whining, I joked that I should draw the thing in Paint and give it to them since they don’t understand simple concepts. …It actually all started earlier this week when we were criticized for not having an electronic copy of the diagram for how to put in our new VPN solution–even though it was simple to explain, and we did have a detailed sketch of it on poster paper. Indeed, his project actually started as a joke: He wanted to share his creation with other Visio fans, so I offered to wrap them in an article…Īccording to Don, the target audience of my personal site is not exactly the IT Crowd, but instead people who need simple explanations of how networks work.

Don recently approached me with a really nice set of network shapes that he calls: Crayon Network.

One Visio Guy reader, Don Harris, decided to do something about it. If your audience are newbies, complicated graphics can make your subject seem complicated.

Office 2007’s Smart Art lets you make even the most boring info chunks jump off the page.īut sometimes this sophistication can be distracting. Visio comes with lots of attractive isometric and 3D network shapes. Daily graphics have improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years.

Visio audio visual stencils