Customer Reviews

Learn Visio 5.0

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been working with different versions of Visio for over 5 years now, but I bought both of Grabowski's books (beginning and advanced) to learn "everything" I could about Visio. This book was an excellent tutorial, well written, and patient. Exercises were educational and the book just seemed to move along at a good pace. I was impressed.

The book is well written and easy to read with good graphics for a beginner level user. It did not provide the information I was searching for. The program is very intuitive to use as the book shows. I wanted to learn how to develop my own templates and stencils. I have not been able to find a clear explanation anywhere as how to do this. I mainly use Visio Home because it has more residential type stencils provided with it. I've wanted to import those stencils into Visio Technical 5 and create custom ones for home planning type layouts. Someone needs to publish a good book that covers this subject clearly.

Over the years I've purchased Visio 3, Visio 5 Technical, and Visio 2007. I recently had to do some Visio work and so I reread this 1998 book (which was sitting on one of my bookshelves). It was excellent then, and it's excellent now (even for the 2007 version of Visio). There are 37 Modules: 1) Starting a New Drawing, 2) Saving Files, 3) Opening Existing Drawings, 4) Setting Up Pages, 5) Views, Zooms, and Pans, 6) Rulers, Grids, and Guidelines, 7) Opening Existing Stencils, 8) Dragging Master Shapes into the Drawing, 9) Sizing and Positioning, 10) Placing Multiple Shapes, 11) Connecting Shapes Together, 12) Cutting, Copying, and Pasting, 13) Formatting Shapes, 14) Formatting Text, 15) Creating Styles, 16) Aligning Shapes, 17) Creating Groups, 18) Boolean Operations, 19) Previewing Before Printing, 20) Printing Drawings, 21) Undoing and Redoing, 22) Help, 23) Drawing Tools, 24) Placing Text and Fields, 25) Spelling, 26) Finding and Replacing Text, 27) Dimensioning, 28) Inserting Objects, 29) Exporting Drawings, 30) Special Selections, 31) Running Macros, 32) Double-Clicking the Mouse Button, 33) Behavior, 34) Custom Properties, 35) Internet Tools, 36)Mapping a Web site, and 37) AutoCAD Drawing Import-Export.

Each Module includes "Uses," "Procedures," and "Hands-on-Activity." Most Modules also have a "Point of Interest." The writing is remarkably concise and precise. The screen shots are big and clear. Both mouse motions and keystrokes are given for each procedure. For those who need a refresher, p. 111 covers connecting shapes, pp. 243-250 cover dimensioning (for Visio Technical 5), and p. 171 covers how to create an array of shapes (for Visio Technical 5). The index is quite detailed. I found very few typos (e.g., p. 73, "lighting" should be "lightning.").

Is there anything to complain about? Not much, but the book would be even better if the screen shots were in full color--this is because Visio makes heavy use of color to help guide the user. Regardless, this book easily earns 5 stars.

This book was very useful to me. I started to work with Visio not without the previous experience with ConceptDraw, but this book with good examples and explanations helped me to master Visio quicker.