Monday, March 23, 2009

Venn diagramming using visio

I work with a programmer who is really talented at hand-drawing Venn Diagrams. Since my handmade sketches are no where near as clear to read as hers, I turned to Visio to sketch up some diagrams.

Here's how to draw a Venn Diagram with Visio:
  1. Draw ovals
  2. Select ovals, then format --> fill, and change Transparency to 50% (adjust according to taste)
  3. Select Shape --> Operations --> Fragment
  4. Shade each fragment to indicate designation
  5. Add a legend if necessary and use format painter to repeat shading.
For a demonstration of the value of this tool, refer to the diagram I just whipped up this morning. I'll submit it to graphjam for posterity as well. And fyi - if you want to avoid the Visio gymnastics, check out graphjam's Venn Diagram builder.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you. This saved me an hour at least.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a bunch.

Anonymous said...

Men want you, and machines fear you...

Thanks for an excellent tutorial!

Anonymous said...

I wasn't aware of the Operations > Fragment operation. This totally rocks. Thanks a million.

Bob Glassett said...

Thanks! Very helpful

Anonymous said...

Is there a way to do this in Visio 2007/2010? Otherwise I'm sure it's very helpful!

Anonymous said...

By the way, if you want to do this in Visio 2007/2010, you want to turn on Developer Mode:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/visiogeneral/thread/176f6300-9bfc-4a76-a59f-252e784ff897

Thanks for the pointer!

Anonymous said...

Very handy - for Visio 2010, Fragment isn't easily available so you have to go to File / Options / Customize Ribbon to show it (select "All Commands" and scoll down to Fragment - you can then add it to a custom group in the ribbon).

Also, make sure you add text AFTER doing the fragment and get the size of your shapes right BEFORE doing fragment - once you fragment, you've effectively created little slices that are independently resized. If you add text before fragmenting, it seems to disappear.

Anonymous said...

Thank you,

This was a very useful tip.