Finding Shapes for Diagrams | Adding Shapes to Diagrams

Visio templates open stencils that contain the shapes used most often for a particular diagram type. However, you might want to add shapes to your diagram that aren't on any of the template's stencils. For example, in a brainstorming diagram, you might want to include a text callout shape to highlight a topic, but how do you find the shape you need?

It's easy. In the Shapes window, use the Search For Shapes box to quickly search for shapes on your computer and on the Web. Using this method, you don't need to open and browse additional Visio stencilsalthough you could do that if you wanted to familiarize yourself with shapes on different stencils.

Tip

To open a stencil, on the File menu, point to Shapes, point to a category, and then click the name of the stencil you want to open.

To search for shapes quickly by using keywords, type the keyword for the shape you want to find in the Search For Shapes box. For example, to find furniture shapes, you might type desk or chair. To find callout or annotation shapes, you might type callout, text, label, or annotation. Then when you click the arrow next to the Search For Shapes box, Visio searches your computer and the Microsoft Office Online Web site for the shapes that match the keyword.

Tip

In the Search For Shapes box, you can type more than one keyword and separate them with spaces, commas, or semicolons.

In this exercise, you continue working with the block diagram that you updated in a preceding exercise. You search for shapes that aren't on the stencils opened by the Block Diagram template, and then you drag the shapes you find onto the drawing page.

OPEN the BlockFind file in DocumentsMicrosoft PressVisio 2007 SBS2_Shapes.

1.	In the Shapes window, in the Search for Shapes box, type Plants.
2.	Click the arrow to the right of the Search for Shapes box, or press the key. Visio searches for shapes with plants in the name or keyword stored with the shape. Tip By default, Visio searches for shapes on your computer and on the Microsoft Office Online Web site. To change the search options, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Shape Search tab.
3.	Do any combination of the following: If a dialog box appears asking you if you want to enable the Indexing Service, click Yes to perform faster future searches. If a dialog box appears telling you that Visio can't establish an Internet connection, click OK to view the results. If a dialog box appears telling you that the search results are greater than the specified maximum, click Yes to view the results. Visio completes its search and creates a plants stencil that contains all the shapes it found.
4.	From the plants stencil in the Shapes window, drag the Potted plant 2 shape onto the drawing page and position it to the right of the of the word, Entrance. Tip You might need to scroll the plants stencil to find the Potted plant 2 shape.
5.	Drag another Potted plant 2 shape onto the drawing page and position it to the right of the other plant you just added to the drawing page. Notice that both of the plant shapes you dragged onto the drawing page are groups because they are composed of two or more shapes that function as a unit. Tip To find shapes that are similar to ones that are already in your drawing, right-click a shape on the drawing page, point to Shape, and then click Find Similar Shapes.
6.	On the title bar of the plants stencil, click the stencil icon to the left of the title Plants, and then click Close on the stencil menu. The plants stencil closes. Tip You can save the plants stencil so that you can use it again to add plants to your diagrams. To do so, click the stencil icon to the left of the stencil's title, click Save, and then in the Save As dialog box, click the Save button. To open the stencil later, on the File menu, point to Shapes, point to My Shapes, and then click plants.
7.	On the Standard toolbar, click the Save button to save your changes to the diagram. Save