Microsoft Visio 2007

Working With Shapes

In the previous two sections, we’ve learned the basics of Visio shapes – inserting and connecting them – and we’ve also learned about Visio stencils – how to create, save, and open them. In this section of the free Microsoft Visio 2007 tutorial, we’re going to learn more advanced topics about working with Shapes to get the drawing you’re trying to create. Shapes are very flexible objects and you will learn how to:

• Insert new shapes
• Manage existing shapes
• Format shapes
• Resize shapes
• Delete a shape
• Position and align shapes
• Group and ungroup shapes
• Order shapes
• Rotate and flip shapes
• Center a drawing

This section of the tutorial is the meat for a lot of what you’re going to do in Visio and will help you understand how to manipulate Shapes to become the building blocks of your drawing.

Inserting New Shapes

As you learned earlier, it’s fairly simple to insert a new shape into a drawing. In this section, we will review how to do that so you can begin controlling and changing the shapes in your Visio drawings. This is the most important thing you can learn in Visio, so we’re going to illustrate adding new shapes in Visio by creating an IT server rack diagram, something networking professionals will frequently do. We’ve downloaded a number of Dell stencils for this exercise from VisioCafe.com. You can find dozens of resources on VisioCafe, a site we highly recommend if you need additional stencils.

Creating an IT Server Rack Diagram in Microsoft Visio 2007

1. Open Microsoft Visio.
2. Select New, Network and then click Rack Diagram. A rack diagram is a cabinet of servers and networking equipment used in data centers.
3. Add a new Rack shape to your drawing by clicking on the Rack master shape in the Rack-mounted equipment stencil, then drag and drop it onto the drawing. This is the first rack in our drawing.
4. Double-click on the shape to label the rack, you’ll see the text label is at the upper right of the shape. You wouldn’t want to label a rack in the middle – that is where the servers go, so this shape knows to place the label at the top right. Label your rack Networking Gear. Right now, your drawing should look like this:
   
5. Let’s add a second shape now. This one will be a cabinet. A cabinet is a rack with a door, so it looks fairly similar. Drag and drop the cabinet onto your draw to the right of your rack. Label it Server rack.
6. Now we have two shapes on our drawing, let’s start adding some networking equipment. When you really build a rack, you often put the heaviest items in the bottom, such as the UPS and power items. Let’s drop a Power supply/UPS shape into the bottom of each rack. Here’s how it looks now (you can download a current version if you want to follow along in Visio):
   
7. Now, let’s fill out our racks. We’re going to add some power strips next to the UPS and one at top, and then the appropriate networking gear and servers for our environment. Just drag and drop the shapes into the correct rack as you build it out. You can download a final version of our racks Visio drawing here.
8. Now you’ve learned how to drag and drop shapes into your drawings.

Creating a new drawing can be fun and one of the most interesting tools available in Microsoft Visio 2007 is the brainstorming drawing. You can brainstorm all sorts of ideas, products, and processes using this tool. Let’s create a brainstorm drawing for the rest of this section’s tutorials.