Formatting the Data in Your Space Plan


If you want just a simple seating arrangement, your space plan might be complete as is. However, you can refine the drawing to serve other purposes as well. You can color-code spaces to show at a glance how they’re used, which employees are full-time, or even which rooms contain printers. And you can use the labeling feature to change the wording that appears on shapes. For example, if the IT department wants to see which computers in a floor plan need to be upgraded, you could label each office space with the amount of RAM in its computer.

Color-Coding Shapes

Suppose you want to see where different departments are located on a floor or which offices contain a particular type of equipment. If you’ve entered custom property data for the resources in your space plan, you can take advantage of the Color By Values command on the Plan menu to add color to shapes automatically. For example, space shapes include a custom property for department. You can use the value of that property to specify the color of spaces, so that shapes representing employees in the Administrative department appear in green and those in Engineering appear in blue, as Figure 26-22 shows. In addition, you can add a legend to your floor plan that shows the meaning of each color you use. Visio places the legend in the lower right corner of the drawing.

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Figure 26-22: You can see categories of information in your floor plan at a glance by color- coding different areas.

To color-code your space plan, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Plan, Color By Values.

  2. In the Color By list, select the category for the shapes that you want to color-code. Depending on the category you choose, different custom properties become available to use for color-coding in the Shape Type list. Click Import Data if you wish to import data before color-coding.

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  3. In the Shape Type box, select the custom property you want to use. The unique values for the selected property appear in the box below. If the custom property has no values—which is the case if you haven’t entered or imported data—<No Value> appears.

  4. To apply different colors to the values shown in the sample area, click the color adjacent to the value and choose a new color. Click OK to apply the colors. Visio fills the appropriate shapes and places a legend on the page.

    Note

    If you drop a shape on the drawing after you’ve applied the colors, or if you change the value of a shape, the shape’s color is not changed automatically to match the legend. You must choose Color By Values again.

Editing a Legend

You can edit the legend if you’d like it to take up less room or use a different font. The legend is really a grouped shape. You can drag a selection handle to resize the shape, or subselect the shapes containing the title text, property text, and colors to change them, as Figure 26-23 shows. You can also ungroup the shapes to make them easier to move around (Shift+Ctrl+U). When you have the legend the way you want it, regroup it to ensure that it moves as a unit.

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Figure 26-23: You can edit the shapes that make up a legend to customize its appearance.

Cross-Reference

For details about all the ways you can edit groups, see “Working with Groups,” page 668.

Saving a Legend Shape

If you customize the legend shape and want to save your changes to use on other pages of your space plan or in other drawings, you can create a master shape from the legend. Just drag the legend onto the Document stencil. Then, when you’re ready to color a different drawing, drag the shape from the Document stencil to the page. The legend shape “remembers” which category and custom property to look for and how to color each shape for its value.

Displaying Labels on Shapes

Shapes in a space plan display a name, which might or might not be the name you want to show. For example, space shapes display the name Office by default, and equipment shapes don’t display a label. Fortunately, space plan shapes are smart enough to display any custom property value as their label, and you can choose which one will appear in the Label Shapes dialog box, as Figure 26-24 shows. You can change the label for one shape, or select several and change them all.


Figure 26-24: You can display the value of any custom property as a shape’s label.

Follow these steps to specify how a shape is labeled:

  1. Select a shape or shapes, and then choose Plan, Label Shapes.

  2. In the Shape Type list, select the type of shape that you want to label.

  3. In the Property list, select up to four custom properties that contain the value you want displayed in the label. For example, you might choose Product Description for an equipment shape, or E-Mail Alias for a person shape.

  4. Click Import Data if you wish to import data into your space plan.

  5. Click OK. Visio adds a label (or labels) to the shape.

  6. To reposition the label, drag the control handle (the yellow diamond) to a new position.

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Troubleshooting
Shapes and text in a space plan are too large

Because floor plans usually represent a large area, they’re typically drawn to a small scale. When you add resource shapes to a room or office, the shape or its label might take up too much space. If the shapes aren’t formatted the way you want them to be, the simplest thing to do is edit the master shape on the document stencil, which updates all the shapes in your drawing that are based on that master shape. To display the document stencil, choose File, Shapes, Show Document Stencil. To edit a master shape on the stencil, double-click the one you want. For details about this technique, see “Editing Multiple Shapes at Once,” page 48.

You can also edit an individual shape’s text if you want it to differ from the others. For example, you might make an administrative assistant’s title more prominent on an employee shape to help new employees find resources. To do this, select a shape, choose Format, Text, and then specify the options you want. For details about working with text, see “Formatting Text,” page 110.

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Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Inside Out
Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft))
ISBN: 0735615160
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 209

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