Visio® 2007 Bible

Chapter 2. Getting Started with Drawings

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating drawings from templates or existing drawings

• Opening Visio drawings and other types of files in Visio

• Opening recently used files quickly

• Specifying save options

• Saving different types of files

• Protecting files

With Visio, there's no reason to consume your precious time or strain your creativity by starting diagrams from scratch. In fact, creating diagrams from templates or existing drawings is a good idea even with the most luxurious deadlines or robust aesthetic sense. A template automatically opens a set of Visio stencils with the shapes you're most likely to use for that type of diagram; applies the typical drawing options, such as paper size and scale; and presents any additional tools, such as menus, toolbars, and wizards, if they exist for that template.

New drawings can originate from a variety of sources, including existing Visio drawings, Visio templates on your computer, and Visio templates from numerous online sources. Furthermore, Visio provides several methods for creating drawings, none of which requires more than a few clicks of your mouse.

Saving your work is a task you should learn to perform often, and particularly before any experimentation with your diagrams or Visio commands. You also call the Save command into play to create your own stencils and templates, as well as other file formats, for example, HTML for web pages or graphics formats to create a picture of a diagram. Visio offers several easy methods ...