Microsoft Visio 2013 Part A

This is the first installment in a blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. Visio comes in 2 versions, standard which does any kind of ordinary drawing but has less templates and professional which lets you link outside pages to your drawing and is a much more heavy duty version complete with a whopping 76 templates. For most people the standard version is fine but the version we are doing in these lessons is professional. Visio is a chart creating tool with drawing and some CAD abilities. Most of your designs will be done at least in part using the shapes and stencils templates. This program has a ribbon much like Microsoft Office 2007 but like 2010 has a back end where if you click File there is a menu but also a whole page of options including settings for setting up the program the way you want. Show/ Grid displays a grid which was shown by default in earlier versions and there is still rulers by default to help place work. If you right click the status bar you can select and deselect toolbars and whether they are shown. Pressing escape brings you back to the standard view although you may have to press it more than once. If you double click on what is being drawn it will fill the page. The stencils and shapes templates are on right of the screen and you can drag and drop these and there is an alignment point surrounding the template to help position it. There are diagonal points to help resize it. Some commands are context sensitive meaning they change according to what work you are doing. Live Preview if you hover over a button temporarily shows the results of pressing it. There is a zoom button complete with pop ups at the bottom of the screen. The one you will use most is zoom extents which shows the full drawing on the workspace.  Pressing the control+ shift + w keys is a short cut to zoom extents. The scroll button on the mouse moves you up and down the screen. If you select a shape with the mouse you can add text to it in a default way. Pressing the control button and using the scroll wheel zooms in and out. Pressing View/ Dynamic Grid turns the alignment line on a selected shape on and off. Finally pressing control + clicking shapes lets you select at one time. I will try and do a 2nd installment later on tonight.

Google Sketch Up 8

The book I read to research this post was Sam’s Teach Yourself Google Sketch Up 8 In 10 Minutes by Steven Holzner which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is part of a series where the books are fairly short and you can read each chapter in around 10 minutes hence the name. Sketch Up 8 comes in 2 versions a free version which is ideal for most jobs and is the version this book is about and a paid version which is $495 at least it was when this book was published and that is a proper high end 3 Modelling software that will do a lot of things like read AutoCAD files. Files that are used by Sketch Up usually use the skp filename extension. It is a while ago this book was published so it might be a bit tricky finding either version of Sketch Up. Google as far as I know haven’t released any more updated versions. The free version does have a lot of 3d modelling tools and a while back I did see a software video tutorial on sale on Amazon. This program is quite and especially if you have experience of other drawing packages is quite intuitive and easy to use. I think the free version especially is a bit of a bargain. I am quite a big fan of this series of books as they don’t just stick to mainstream subjects like facebook and twitter. This book is on quite an unusual subject matter. I think more publishers should take a chance and commision computing books on unusual subjects. When you think of if someone writes a book about facebook they are competing with literally hundred’s of other titles about the same subject.

 

Google Sketchup

The book I read to research this post was Google Sketchup 7 for Dummies by Aidan Chopra which is a very good book which I borrowed from the library. This book dates from 2009 so there has probably been a couple of versions since. Google purchased the company that makes Sketchup in 2006 & at that time it was an expensive program, since then they offer the standard version as a free download & there’s a pro version you can buy. The pro version is aimed at people like architects. In addition there’s a website called 3d Warehouse where if you do an interesting 3d drawing in Sketchup you can upload it to this website which is hosted by Google & other users can download it free of charge. Also Sketchup is compatible with Google Earth. This is a project where Google has mapped all the Earth. Each location varies from 4 years to 2 months since it was mapped. In addition Google hopes to eventually map all the major cities buildings in 3d in Sketchup. In some locations the resolution in Google Earth is so fine you could potentially see a coffee cup. Sketchup is more intuitive & easier to use than for example AutoCAD. For example to select a line you click it once with the mouse, to select a face you double click it, & to select a whole object you triple click it. To copy something you merely press the control key & use the push/pull tool. In addition to the version for Windows there’s a version for the Mac with OSX.