Populating your architecture from Microsoft Visio

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Populating from MS Visio

You can import your architecture from Microsoft Visio. Shapes in your Visio drawing will be imported as components into ABACUS. Connections in your Visio drawing will be imported as connections and the drawing itself will be imported into ABACUS as a diagram. Furthermore, any Custom Properties in your Visio drawing will be imported as properties with the Sort Key mapped to the Property Type, Label to the Property Name and the Value to the Property Value, certain visio-specific properties contained in the shape data that are not user-defined however are not imported.

Note

The Import from Visio feature requires that Microsoft Visio 2003 or newer is installed on the computer.

To import your Visio drawings into ABACUS

1.Select File | New and select From Visio from the dialog that appears and click OK.

Note

If you wish to import into an existing ABACUS project then either right-click the Components node within an Architecture, or right-click an individual component within an Architecture and then select Import | From Visio.

2.Browse for the Visio file you wish to import.

Note

Below are some simple rules or recommended practices when constructing (or modifying) a MS Visio drawing for import into ABACUS.

3.The lines or connections need to be actual connectors, NOT shapes.

•Otherwise ABACUS will just import them as components and accordingly they won’t be “attached” to anything.

•If you need to do some “smart” routing (i.e. other than a straight line) then use the Dynamic connector on the Basic Shapes stencil, ABACUS will import the routing / anchor points fine.

•Try to avoid using the “Ring network” and “Ethernet” shapes from the Network and Peripherals stencil that allows lots of components to be “connected” to it. While we import the attachments fine as connections the original shape is still “expanded” to reflect the attachments. Use separate a separate “hub/bus” shape (without the connector “legs”) and then explicitly connect each component to the hub/bus with separate connectors.

•If a line or connection behaves like a shape, right click on it and go to 'Format | Behaviour...' and make sure that Interaction style is set to Line (1-dimensional).

3.The components need to be shapes NOT connectors.

•Otherwise ABACUS will just import them as connections and accordingly all the shape information will be lost.

•If a component behaves like a connector, right click on it and go to 'Format | Behaviour...' and make sure that Interaction style is set to Box (2-dimensional).

4.Connector ends need to be attached to shapes, NOT floating around in the background behind the shape.

•If you don’t connect the connectors to the shapes then ABACUS has no way of knowing that you intended to attach the given connector to the shape/component and accordingly it will leave that end of the connection un-attached.

5.Labels for shapes should be (where possible) the inbuilt text label for the shape, NOT a separate text box on the drawing.

•Separate text boxes will get imported by ABACUS as components in their own right and while you can merge the “label” component with the real component in ABACUS, or just convert the “label” component to a freeform shape (i.e. not a component itself) it is best to avoid these steps.

6.Use the same base shape for each instance of the same type, DON’T be lazy and use rectangle sometimes and box others from different shape stencils.

•ABACUS uses the base shape and its base colour to uniquely identify the component and connection types in the drawing so a “red rectangle” and a “red box” will get imported as two separate component types. These component types can be merged in ABACUS but it is best to avoid these steps.

7.Wholly encapsulate “children” shapes within their “parents”, DON’T leave them hanging over the edge.

•ABACUS will detect any shape that is wholly encapsulated within another shape as a child of the parent so make sure the whole shape, including the label portion, is enclosed.

8.DON’T position a shape overlapping two other shapes.

•If a shape overlaps two other shapes, be it a “grouping” / background rectangle or otherwise, it will be imported by ABACUS as a component that is a child of neither overlapped shapes but as soon as you select the component in ABACUS’ drawing tool, due to the top-left being the components reference point, it will become a child of the left overlapped shape/component.

9.Try to minimise the use of text notes on the drawing because these will get imported as components in their own right and will need to be converted to freeform shapes in ABACUS. Think about whether they are really the name of an existing component or connection.

10.While ABACUS supports rich / coloured / vector-based shapes, try to minimise the use of bitmaps, foreign shapes and Enhanced Metafiles for shapes as ABACUS currently does not support these types. They will be imported as simple white rectangles.

11.Try to avoid carriage returns (shift-return) in labels as they are imported and shown as a special character “[]” in ABACUS for the component name.

12.Try to minimise the different colours that are used for shapes of the same type. As mentioned above, base colour and base shape uniquely identifies component and connection types so the more variation there is the more merging and consolidation that will need to be done post-import in ABACUS.

13.Be careful with filled shapes because if a shape is filled all the way to the corners then colouring it later in ABACUS will have no effect.

14.For complex line-based shapes you must use a polygon which is created by having lines starting where the previous one finishes and then ultimately going back to the start point. If desired, you can use fill and line width to make the polygon look like an 'arrow' or whatever shape you want.

15.Make sure the shapes ID in MS Visio is meaningful not just Shape.xx. This is editable using right-click 'Show Shapesheet' which is available in MS Visio developer mode (enabled through Tools | Options in MS Visio).

16.Ellipses and arcs within shapes are supported in ABACUS but nurbs and splines are currently not supported.

17.Make sure the whole shape is grouped in MS Visio or it will get imported as several components/types.

18.Try to minimise the use of rotated shapes within subshapes as they will sometimes not be imported correctly.

To import only your Visio shapes into ABACUS

1.Open a viewpoint or select a diagram and go to its stencil.

2.Right-click an empty space on the Shapes tab and click the Import from Visio option.

3.Select the Visio project you wish to import.

4.Select the shapes you wish to add to ABACUS in the following dialog and click the OK button.