How to Create Diagrams in Microsoft Visio 2013

Creating Diagrams in Microsoft Visio 2013

Whenever you create a diagram, you will use a template, even if it's a blank template. You don't have to use a predesigned template if you don't want. However, in this article, we're going to use a basic template to show you some basic steps to creating drawings.

In this article, we're going to learn about:

The Dynamic Grid

AutoConnect

Quick Shapes

AutoAdd

AutoDelete

We'll also show you how to:

Copy and paste shapes

Connect and resize shapes

Reposition shapes

Replace Shapes

The Dynamic Grid

The dynamic grid helps you position shapes on a page. It's similar to a grid that you'd use in a graphics design program, or even Microsoft Word.

To learn to use the dynamic grid, we first need to open a template. Go to the Backstage view, click New, then select Basic Diagram. Choose your unit of measure, then click Create.

This is what you'll see in your Visio window.

Note that the Shapes window is on the left, and the Drawing window is on the right.

Next, go to the Shapes window. Locate the Rectangle shape, as highlighted below.

Drag this shape onto your page in the Drawing window. Place it in the upper right hand corner of the page.

If you're having trouble getting the rectangle shape on your page, remember to click on the rectangle shape in the Shapes window. Keep your left mouse button pressed down! With the left mouse button pressed down, move your mouse to the page in the Drawing window. You'll see your mouse dragging the rectangle shape.

Next, drag a circle shape. Position it to the left of the rectangle. However, once you've dragged the circle and BEFORE you release the mouse button, move it up and down on the page. You'll see a Dynamic Grid line appear.

This shows the circle's position relative to the rectangle. The green line that goes across the top of the circle and rectangle shows they are aligned by the top of their shapes. If we move the circle, we can easily change the alignment using the dynamic grid.

In the snapshot below, they are aligned by the center of each shape.

If you want to move the circle back to where you originally dropped it, press CTRL+Z.

You can use the dynamic grid to keep placing shapes on the page, all the while keeping them properly aligned and spaced. Use the rules for spacing.

Selecting Shapes

To move or make other changes to shapes in Visio 2013, you must first select the shape. To select a shape, click on the shape. You will see a bounding box appear around a shape when it is selected, as pictured below.

To select multiple shapes, select your first shape as you learned to do above. Press the Shift key and hold it down when selecting all other shapes.

To select all shapes, select a shape, then go to the Home tab, then the Editing group. Click the downward arrow to the right of Select, then choose Select All (Home>Select>Select All).

Copy and Paste Shapes

Chances are, you've used the copy and paste features in other software programs before. However, let's take a minute to explain it again just in case.

Whenever you copy a shape, you copy it to the clipboard. The clipboard stores everything that you either copy from your drawing.

You can then paste that shape into your drawing or into another drawing.

To copy a shape, first select it as we learned to do in the last section.

Right click on the shape, then choose Copy from the context menu.

Next, right click in the drawing where you want to paste the shape. Right click again and choose Paste.

The shape is then pasted into your drawing, as shown below.

The shape that you pasted into the drawing is the one selected. When a shape is selected, you can hold down the left mouse button over the shape until you see a 4-way arrow. You can then drag and drop the shape to the location where you want it to appear on the page.

Duplicate Shapes

Duplicating shapes sounds more complicated and involved than it really is. To duplicate a shape, simply select the shape, then press CTRL+D twice in a row.

The shape is then duplicated.

Resize and Rotate Shapes

Visio 2013 gives you several ways to resize shapes. Chances are, you're going to want to resize shapes as you use Visio, so learning these methods is important.

You can resize shapes using your mouse, keyboard, or the Size & Position window.

Just be warned that not all shapes can be modified. The only way to know if a shape can be is to wait until you try to resize it. You may also discover that shapes that look identical don't behave the same. Again, you won't know until it happens to you.

That said, let's learn how to resize a shape.

Start out by selecting a shape.

You'll then see the box around it. The white squares that you see at each of the four corners and on the sides of the shape are called handles.

You can drag the side handles to change the width or the height.

You can drag the corner handles to change the height and width, all the while keeping the same proportions.

You can rotate a shape by using the rotation handle. This is the circular arrow above the shape.

To do this, hover your mouse over the rotation handle until your mouse cursor is also a circular arrow. Click your left mouse button and rotate the shape while holding the mouse button down. You can rotate it left or right.

Using the Size & Position Window

To view the Size & Position window, go to the View tab on the ribbon. Find the Show group, then click the Task Panes button. Click Size & Position. (View>Task Panes>Size & Position).

You should already have a shape selected.

When you click Size & Position, you'll see this little window appear. It is typically docked on the left side of the Drawing window or to the left of the shape.

In this window, you can see the coordinates for your shape, as well as the size. You can also see the rotation angle. You can change any of these attributes by clicking on the attribute, then typing in the new one.

NOTE: Pin Pos is the center of rotation for the shape. Imagine a pin through the shape. The pin holds the shape at that point. By default in the snapshot above, it's Center-Center.

Using Lines to Connect Shapes

All shapes in Visio 2013 are either one dimensional or two dimensional, or 1D or 2D. One dimensional shapes are lines. They have endpoints that can be connected to other shapes. You often see lines connecting shapes in diagrams. These are those lines.

Two dimensional shapes in Visio have edges as well as an interior. We've worked with two dimensional shapes in this article. Now, we're going to use one dimensional shapes to connect two dimensional shapes.

We're going to use these two circles on our drawing. We're going to connect them together.

Note that the circles are two dimensional. They have an edge and an interior.

To connect them with a one dimensional shape, we're going to go to the Home tab, then click the downward arrow to the right of Pointer tool, as shown below. Select Line.

Now, point your mouse near any shape on your page. You'll see black squares appear on the edges and centers of the shapes.

Want to learn more? Take an online course in Microsoft Visio 2013.

These squares are connection points.

Move the cursor near a connection point. A green square will appear. That square tells you that you can click on it to glue an end of the line to that connection point.

Click the connection point, then drag to a connection point on another shape. Release the mouse button.

The line is now glued to the edges of the shapes.

You can tell the line is glued because a white circle appears on the destination end and a green on the original connecting point. If the line wasn't glued, the destination end would have a solid grey square and the starting point would have a white square.

You can also use freeform lines to connect shapes. Freeform lines can be zigzag or squiggly. To draw a freeform line, select the Freeform line tool. It's grouped with the Line tool.

Use it the same way you did the Line tool.

You can then use the points (blue circles) to adjust the shape of the line.

Using Dynamic Connectors

Dynamic connectors is another type of line in Visio. If you use a dynamic connector, Visio adds and removes bends in the line for you. This is based on the position of the shapes and connection points that you are connecting with a line.

To use a dynamic connector, go to the Home tab, then click the Connector button (Home>Connector).

Next, drag from a connection point of one shape to a connection point on another shape.

In the snapshot below, you can see we are drawing our line. Note how the line bends as we drag.

We keep drawing our line by dragging the mouse to the destination connection point.

Notice how the dynamic connector added bends in the line that we glued to the destination connection point:

Types of Glue in Visio 2013

You glue lines to shapes using connection points. However, you can also glue lines to shapes without connection points.

Dyanmic glue is used to draw lines to shapes that do not have connection points (or glue a line to a part of a shape that doesn't have a connection point).

Static glue is used to glue lines to shapes that have connection points (or that you're gluing to connection points).

About AutoConnect

AutoConnect is simply a fast way to link shapes together using dynamic connectors. In other words, it saves you time when you're creating drawings.

To learn to use AutoConnect, click the File tab, then New. Click the Flowchart category.

Double click Basic Flowchart to open it.

Now, drag a start/end shape onto the drawing page. You'll see the Start/End shape in the Shapes window.

After you do that, drag some Process and Decision shapes on your page.

Notice that if you click on our mouse over any shape in the drawing, blue AutoConnect arrows appear on the sides of the shape that aren't connected to other shapes.

Go ahead and point to the arrow that's on the right side of the start/end shape. You'll see a preview that shows you the dynamic connector. This is called Live Preview.

You'll also see a mini toolbar that contains the shapes in your drawing. We'll talk about it more later.

For now, click the AutoConnect arrow to connect the shapes.

Now connect the process shape to the decision shape.

About Quick Shapes

We're about to make creating drawings even quicker and easier for you by teaching you to use Quick Shapes.

When we used AutoConnect, we saw the mini toolbar appear. You can use that mini toolbar to create quick drawings.

Let's see how it works.

Drag a start/end shape onto your page.

Point your mouse to an AutoConnect arrow.

You will see the mini toolbar, as circled below.

When you mouse over a shape in the mini toolbar, it appears on your page. You can see the diamond shape appear on our page below.

Click on a shape in the mini toolbar to add it to your page.

The shapes are automatically connected with a dynamic connector.

AutoAdd and AutoDelete

AutoAdd and AutoDelete are two more tools that Visio gives you to make creating drawings as quick and easy as possible.

AutoAdd helps you to arrange your drawings to accommodate new shapes that you may add.

AutoDelete removes connectors that still exist after you delete a shape that is linked to another shape.

Let's learn how to use these tools.

You can see our flowchart pictured below. We created this flowchart using AutoAdd, as learned in the last section.

To use AutoAdd, we are going to drag a Subprocess shape from the stencil.

We're going to place the shape on top of one of the dynamic connectors in our drawing.

In the snapshot above, we have dragged the shape over a connector, but we haven't released our mouse button yet.

When we release our mouse button, the shape is inserted into our drawing and linked to the shape that comes before, as well as the one that comes after.

To use AutoDelete, we're going to refer to our flowchart again. We're going to delete the Subprocess shape we just added.

To do this, select the shape. Press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Notice that Visio deletes the shape as well as the connectors to the shape.

Replacing Shapes

We are going to create a new drawing before we teach you how to replace shapes in your drawings. So far, we have created a diagram and flowchart drawing. We are doing this so you get experience working with the different templates and types of drawings that Visio 2013 offers.

That said, click the File tab in Visio 2013.

Click New on the left hand side.

Click on the Maps and Floor Plans category, then double click on Directional Map.

In the snapshot above, you can see the stencils for this drawing in the Shapes window.

Next, drag a shape onto the center of the page. Use the Dynamic Grid to drop it in the center.

In the snapshot above, we chose the 3-way shape.

Select the shape.

Go to the Home tab. Click Line.

Now change the color to red. This is found in the Shape Styles group under the Home tab.

Next, go to the stencil and drag more road shapes. We have a three way shape. You can drag a road square and a curve if you want. Glue these to the original shape.