Microsoft Visio 2002 Course

Welcome to the Visio 2002 course. My name is Pravah Pugh. Let's take a quick overview now of what we'll be covering in the course. To start with, we'll be looking at the basics of drawing production. Visio makes creating drawings very simple, and we'll be looking at those simple techniques straight off. Following that, we'll be looking at how to use what you've produced. There's various ways to do that from printing it, viewing it on screen, or indeed incorporating it into other documents created with other Microsoft applications, etc. Then we'll be moving on to the improved quality and utility. There's a lot more that you can do with Visio with a little bit more skill. And we'll be showing you what you need to know in that area. And then finally, we'll be wrapping up with a look at all the solutions that Visio provides. Why invent the wheel, or reinvent the wheel when Visio gives you so many ready-made solutions to use. Let's look now in a little more detail at each of those areas, starting with the basics of drawing production. So in the beginning with Visio chapter, we'll be looking at basic Visio concepts, and teaching you how to navigate around the user interface so that you can most readily access the parts of your drawing that you need, and find the tools that you need as well. Then we'll be going down to actually creating a diagram, and we'll be understanding about shapes and the placement of shapes. And working with pages. We'll follow that with linking shapes with connectors. Once we've put shapes on the page, lots of diagrams require them to be interrelated with connectors. And also we can manage connections by gluing them in place and otherwise manage their behavior. And we'll look at the options available there. Then, finally in this part, we'll be looking at text. Because as in any document, text is an important part. We'll look at how Visio deals with that. Then under using what you produce, we'll be looking first and managing and using the Visio output. And that includes protecting Visio diagrams against inadvertent or purposeful change, when you don't want that to happen. We'll look at various options for printing. And then we'll look at linking and embedding, and importing and exporting Visio information so that we can use Visio diagrams in other computer applications. Then in the second chapter in this area, we'll be looking at data and diagrams. There's a lot of, wealth of information that a diagram contains, and by linking it to a database, we can both export information or indeed import information for use in our drawings. In the improving quality and utility section now, firstly we'll be looking at precision working in Visio. And covering such things as working to scale, using the drawing aids that Visio provides (such as rulers, grids and snapping into place). And we'll also look at the relative alignment of shapes to get things looking balanced on our page. Under customizing Visio, we'll be looking at the drawing tools that Visio provides. We'll be looking at the one-dimensional and two-dimensional shapes, then we'll see how to customize masters, stencils and how to use templates. Then the final area is the Visio solutions. First of these is business forms, charts and maps. Visio provides a number of ready-made templates, which make it easy to produce forms, charts and maps. Then there is the area of relationship and process mapping - a popular one for using Visio. Doing flow-charts, organizational charts, that sort of thing. Project management is an area of interest. There are a lot more sophisticated project management tools available, but Visio with its simplicity can provide you with all the tools that you need. Network diagram is another popular area where Visio is used, and we'll show you how to access the pre-defined network shapes and to set up a diagram, including one spanning multiple pages. And also how to report on equipment and track inventory using your Visio diagrams. The final chapter in the course takes a look at floor and site plans. And in particular, we look at office layouts, and how to use Visio's scale drawing capabilities. So, as you can see, we've got an interesting and varied course ahead of us. So let's move on now to the first lesson.