If you’re not familiar with these techniques, I can offer some resources that will help get you up to speed: Custom patterns are a bit more hidden than shadowing, but neither feature requires ShapeSheet development or programming to achieve. He did this using clever application of two formatting features:īoth of these techniques are readily available to end-users.
Keep It Simple With Two “End-user” TechniquesĪ graphic artist (aka: young whippersnapper) at D-Tools is clearly smarter than I (although I can probably still out-do him in calculus…) He was able to create the woofer and tweeter much more simply, using just two circles for each unit! I also suspected that the cool shading effects might require my complicated, yet attractive Off-center Radial Fill Effect technique. When I first saw these shapes, my “expert eye” told me that the woofer and tweeter were both composed of at least four circles, each with fancy gradient fills.Īlthough eight is not a huge number, that many separate shapes could start to get unwieldy if you have to protect and guard formatting or enter smart formulas to control sizing. Well, those are some mighty attractive speaker shapes! Not bad for a “flowcharting app, business graphics” application, eh? But since we’re stuck in 96-dpi-monitor-land right now, we’ll just zoom in to give you a better look: It’s a pretty attractive-looking speaker: it might even qualify for the Visio Art Page! And if you have a high-res printer, it looks even better. Take a look at this good-lookin’ speaker shape, which you’ll find on the Speakers stencil that comes with D-Tools System Integrator 5: Yes, we can hear the Adobe Illustrator guys over in the Art Department snickering, and see them looking down their noses…īut if we dip deep enough into our cauldron of Visio Black Magic, we can often find choice morsels to help us fight back!Īnd in today’s case, we get some really cool effects without using the ShapeSheet at all, so just about anybody can take advantage of these techniques! A Fine Speaker is a Work of Art So in the quest to keep file size down, and performance up, Visio shape designers often shy away from adding too much detail to their SmartShapes. But the complexity of the ShapeSheet also adds bloat to even the simplest of shapes. Visio SmartShapes offer a wonderful vehicle for delivering powerful graphical objects with built-in intelligence without code.
We’ll tear these SmartShapes apart and show how you can use custom line patterns and creative shadow techniques to add pizzazz to your shapes, without adding bloat!īeauty and Intelligence: Mutually Exclusive?Īh yes, the ShapeSheet giveth, and the ShapeSheet taketh away. In this article, we’ll look at some innovative A/V equipment shapes from D-Tools that offer the win-win scenario of good-looking and light weight. Attractive, realistic-looking Visio equipment shapes don’t have to be heavy and inefficient.
0 kommentar(er)
