Showing posts with label graphics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graphics. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Data-linked diagrams: Multiple data graphics with a single shape

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Yana Terukhova is a Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team.

Visio makes it easy to build visually compelling organization charts and enhance them to meet your specific business needs. You can create a data-linked diagram connected to your organization’s key business indicators and then make sure your information is always current by linking it from an external source. Then you can display the information with data graphics. You can bring even more business insight into your diagram by showing multiple data graphics with a single shape.

Shapes can be associated with a single data point—for example, the percent of budget spent by employee—but you can also create diagrams where each shape shows multiple data points, such as the number of employees in each department, sales attainment for employees in revenue-generating roles or other metrics that are important in your organization.

There are a few different ways to do this, but the most simple is to add multiple data elements to a single data graphic. For example, if we wanted to show the number of employees in each department on our organization chart, we could edit our existing data graphic and add a text call out under the main shape.

Visio allows you to specify where you’d like data graphics to show up on shapes--just uncheck the Use default position box and select a position that is better suited to what you are hoping to achieve.  In this case, we chose the Center, Below Shape position.

If you want to change the fill of the data graphic, select that element and change the fill as you would for any other shape.

With our organization chart we can create a diagram that represents multiple dimensions of data in an easy-to-follow format. The first thing to think about is whether the Coin diagram type is the best way of representing data. In situations where I’m showing multiple data graphics per person, I like to use shapes that are open. In this case, I’ll switch to the Bound style. (Go to the Org Chart tab to select the shape style that best fits your needs.)

You may need to use the height and width controls to make the shapes large enough hold the data graphics you’d like. Once you have the shapes looking the way you’d like, you can use the layout controls to adjust spacing between shapes.

Considering the amount and variety of information we want to display on this diagram, and that the data graphics are usually very visual and colorful, we can switch to Simple design for the diagram itself. (Go to the Design tab to select the design style that best fits your needs.) This way we can read our business-intelligent diagram most effectively.

Using Ashima as an example, you can see we added three additional shapes to the organization chart, grouped them, and applied data graphics to them:

Note that not every data graphic needs to be applied to every shape. In the organization chart example, only some employees produce revenue, so they have sales metrics attached to their names, while other employees do not.

Here is our final dynamic data-linked diagram:

Use Visio Services to share your diagram with others and make it available to everyone, from nearly any device.

–Yana Terukhova, Product Marketing Manager


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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

More SmartArt graphics: Hexagon Radial and Picture Frame

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

(This post was first published in 2011 right after we released new SmartArt for Office 2010. It's the third in a series about SmartArt, which begins with 10 new SmartArt graphics.To read all of them, follow the links at the bottom of this post. This one was written by Adam Callens, Program Manager.)

We're always looking for ways to improve our products and provide content that meets your needs. So today I'd like to introduce you to two brand new SmartArt graphics for Office 2010 -- Hexagon Radial and Picture Frame.

Hexagon Radial is a new take on an old concept. Circular process diagrams are widely used, so we decided to create something familiar but with a different visual twist. The use of hexagons and trapezoids gives you a multi-step process with a central theme or title, but with a visual sharpness provided by the numerous corners and straight lines. We intentionally put a lighter color on the connecting trapezoid so that the focus remains on the text and not on the shapes themselves.

New Hexagon Radial SmartArt graphic

As we've seen the use of images in documents and presentations continue to rise, we wanted to provide a clean way to tie your text to your image without having to use traditional captions. The Picture Frame layout accomplishes this by using an offset frame or border that binds the text to the image. This may present a challenge for you if the frame overlaps important content in the image. If that happens, I recommend using the Crop tool on the Picture Tools tab. With the image selected in your SmartArt graphic, clicking the crop tool allows you to move and resize your image without moving or resizing the shape containing the image.

New Picture Frame SmartArt graphic

I hope you enjoy using the new SmartArt graphics as much as we enjoyed making them and, as always, we welcome your feedback!

For more about other newly released SmartArt graphics, see the following:

-- Adam Callens


View the original article here

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Resolution: Graphics Driver Error for Adobe Presenter Video Creator

September 20, 2012

When recording a video using Adobe Presenter Video Creator, if you get an internal error or graphics driver error at the end of recording a video, opening a project, or publishing a project, it’s quite possible that the graphics driver for your computer/laptop is not up-to-date.

Follow these simple steps to check the graphics driver version and update it to the latest version:

Verify if the driver is up-to-date – Device Manager > Display Adapters > right-click on the adapter > Properties > Driver tab. Check ‘Driver Date’. Ideally, the driver should not be older than a couple months.If you have an old driver, identify the make of the graphics card on your computer.Download and install the latest drivers from the corresponding vendor (for example, Intel, AMD, nVidia).

If you still get the error messages, please follow these steps to email us the diagnostic report.


View the original article here

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Graphics awesomeness, circa 1990

Ian Moss juxtaposed an interesting pair of vintage videos. First there’s “The mighty Quantel Paintbox with its custom hardware and 10 years of knowhow behind it…”

“…versus version 1 of Adobe Photoshop, running on a Macintosh Classic for a 10th of the cost.”

The second vid’s a bit misleading as it shows PS 1.0 running on Mac Plus (from 1986) “with 1-bit (black&white) display, 8MHz CPU and 4MB RAM.” Here’s Photoshop co-creator John Knoll re-creating his original Photoshop demo:

Posted by John Nack at 8:48 AM on July 10, 2012

View the original article here

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Rovio Chooses Flash Player 11 with Support for 3D Graphics

Today, Rovio launched Angry Birds for Facebook using Flash Player 11 with support for 3D graphics. The most social version of Angry Birds yet takes advantage of hardware accelerated graphics in Flash Player to bring a silky smooth gaming experience to a wider audience than ever before. More than 130 million people play Angry Birds every day – now with Flash Player, hundreds of millions of Facebook users can do the same. New, enhanced special effects like lighting, smoke and explosions running smoothly at 60 frames per second bring the game to a whole new level and allow players to have a more connected and engaging experience. As we showed you at Adobe MAX in the fall, Rovio’s general manager of North America, Andrew Stalbow provided a sneak peek of this new hardware accelerated version of Angry Birds built on Flash Player 11:

Angry Birds on Facebook game makes it even more exciting to play with friends, offering amazing new power-ups like Sling Scope, Birdquake, King Sling and Super Seed to extend players’ gratifying arsenals. And with new accelerated graphics, the feathery antics hvae never been more fun to more people. For more information about how to power-up your games using Flash and AIR, please visit the Adobe Gaming Solutions site.


View the original article here

Friday, January 13, 2012

Travel Centre with new SmartArt graphics

This is the fourth in our series of blog posts about 10 new SmartArt graphics that are available now for free. Today's post was written by Mary Sobczyk, Office writer. Check out other newly released smart art here, hereand here.

I would like to introduce you two more new SmartArt graphics - topic image alternating accent and theme image grid.

I have been thinking about where you go for summer holiday (if money were no object). In addition to reviewing the OneNote TripBooks for inspiration, I thought I would use this SmartArt graphic layouts, to gather ideas. These layouts would both be also an excellent way to display your travel pictures.

In this example in the main screen is a map, and then smaller images are individual countries. This layout switches between squares and rectangles, which makes it easy, your horizontal (rectangle) and vertical (square) display pictures.

New Theme Picture Alternating Accent SmartArt graphic

I have also some of the text centered and the font color in the text areachanged.

I use this SmartArt graphic to plan what I want to do on my trip every day. Set-off the image from the frame makes my images are characterized by the eye draw. Just be careful you, that the frame has performed an important part of the image.

New Theme Picture Grid SmartArt graphic

Both this SmartArt graphic layout works well for a family photo, where the parents would be the first (overview) and then the children (and pets!) in smaller images could be.

So, what's your favorite smart art and why? You say more in the comments what you want by see and use as you choose, the SmartArt graphic.

PS: If you do not see the new SmartArt graphics, connected galleries to enable explains check out this introductory post, wHich.

--Mary Sobczyk


View the original article here