Microsoft Visio

[cfellows]

Just curious, does anyone else use Visio as their 2D CAD software of choice?

Chuck

 

[zeeprogrammer]

Interesting. I use Visio quite a bit at work to flowchart my programming. I wasn't aware you could use it for CAD. Hm...gotta look into this. At work. ;D

 

[stevehuckss396]

I use autocad 2002 for 2D drawing.

 

[cfellows]

These are some examples of stuff I've done in Visio.

I'm also just beginning to investigate developing macros in Visio Visual Basic for Applications. I've found some pretty neat stuff on the web for enhancing the drawing capabilities.

Chuck

 

[BigBore]

Wow! NIce! Ain't nuttin' wrong with that.

 

[zeeprogrammer]

Wow indeed. I am going to look into this. Over lunch time of course. ;D

 

[rake60]

I have Visio 2007 Pro but I've never really played with it.
I'll be looking into it now.

Great works Chuck! Thm:

Rick

 

[shred]

I use Visio for a lot of my 2D CAD. I used to use it for everything drawing-related (drawing plans and one step up from C-o-C's and so on), but decided to force myself to learn my CAD/CAM system by using it instead... I constantly want to pitch that out the window when trying to do something would be a piece of cake in Visio.

When I was looking for CAD software, I spent a while looking for one with a Visio-like interface, but never found one.

 

[Troutsqueezer]

Very nice Chuck. There are a number of folks at Intel who come up with ingenious ways to illustrate all sorts of things in Visio. Of course we have and use all sorts of expensive and sophisticated CAD programs for our work but often documents cross my desk which are Visio files, usually done in that format because the originator works in a dept which has no budget for CAD seats. For that reason I always keep a working Visio program installed.

Your illustrations can also be done quite easily in CorelDRAW and look identical (once you know the program). Adobe Illustrator works as well but I'm no fan of that program.

-Trout

 

[Russel]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone use Google sketchup?

http://sketchup.google.com/

There is a free version and a pay "Pro" version.

 

[cfellows]

For many years I used Designer, developed and sold by Micrografx. They were bought out several years ago by Corel and I do have the Corel Designer 12. It has a lot of flexibility, but Visio seems to have a nice balance of easy to use and flexibility. I'm also continuing to find new features in Visio that are useful.

I downloaded Visio 2010 Beta last night (it's free if you're interested). I didn't see much difference in functionality from Visio 2007. Unfortunately they went to the new "Ribbon" menu system which they also introduced with Excel and Word 2007. I hated this new user interface so much, I went back to my old versions of Word & Excel 2003. Looks like I'll also be sticking with Visio 2007 for awhile. I'm too old to spend much time learning a new user interface!

Chuck

 

[black85vette]

I'll have to go have another look at Visio. We have a large and complex computer network and use Visio to document it, but I have never tried to do CAD type drawing in it.

Since we plan and implement network wiring we also have a couple of computers loaded with AutoCAD so we can read and mark up construction drawings. Learning curve was pretty steep on that one and we don't use it very much.

 

[rog/tn]

Chuck...
Great work in Visio. Thm: It's been 10 years since I used it.
Can you save your files as a .dxf format from visio???

 

[ironman]

I used to use a program many years ago in my business for making presentations and introduction documents. If that program is the same one, I missed out on a lot of stuff it could do. I use Turbocad V16 for my drawing. Looks great Chuck. ironman

 

[black85vette]

Chuck;

I'll admit I was skeptical but had some time at work and pulled up Visio and the engineering template. It has much more to it than I would have guessed. Not everything I wanted to do was intuitive but I managed to get a few things drawn. I will give it another go and see what else it can do.

Not sure I would pay for a copy but since we get MS Office Professional loaded on our laptops I have all the programs available.

 

[shred]

Visio can save as DXF, though it doesn't do that well with complicated things like fonts.

I mostly use the drawing tools-- circle, rectangle, line, etc and adjust the properties as needed versus all the pre-packaged shapes.

 

[BobWarfield]

If you like Visio, but don't want to pay the high price, try Gliffy. It's an online clone of Visio you can try for free and then subscribe to for $5 a month:

http://www.gliffy.com/

It works well. I don't like Visio for CAD, being a Rhino guy, but Gliffy is certainly cheap and cheerful.

Before I got CAD, I used to draw things in MSFT PowerPoint of all things. It wasn't terrible. Beat pencil and paper.

Best,

BW