Chapter 3: Connecting Shapes

Overview

What's the point of a delicious meal without utensils to place the medley of flavors in your mouth? Well, Microsoft Office Visio 2007 is much like that dilemma. Shapes are the delicious food and connectors are the utensils that deliver it. Culinary metaphors aside, connectors make Office Visio 2007 diagrams come to life and clarify their flow, meaning, and organization. Just as utensils come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and purposes, so do the ways you can communicate information about ideas, processes, organizations, layouts, and even buildings with Visio 2007. The bottom line is that shapes might be the focus of diagrams, but without connectors who will know what the shapes are doing and why they are doing it? Shapes and connectors together provide a beautiful meal.

The previous chapter introduced a few of the methods for connecting shapes. This chapter provides an in-depth look at connectors so that you can revise connected drawings more easily and take advantage of the automated layout features in Visio 2007.