Paint brush

[swell]

Hi, is there an easy way to simply free form paint something? (in 2019 visio), like in Paintbrush and those tools, they have a paintbrush. 

I think the established way in visio is to like first draw some object (may it be free form) but then there are some arcane criteria's, which only if one follows accurately, then only insert color capability becomes enabled.

In my case, I am drawing free form a lot, so my figures are not perfect, so wondering if there is a paint tool to smudge in color in my drawings.

Thanks a lot everyone.

[Yacine]

Not sure if I understood well. You want to fill shapes freely drawn with a color.
Whilst setting a fill color is rather easy, you probably struggle with open geometry paths, that cannot be filled by default.


The trick is to set the field "NoFill" to false in the shapesheet of the shape.


In your daily work, you'will certainly not want to modify this field manually. Use a macro.

Code Select Expand

Option Explicit

Sub fillOpenShapes()
  Dim shp As Shape
 
  For Each shp In ActiveWindow.Selection
    shp.CellsSRC(visSectionFirstComponent, 0, 0).FormulaU = "FALSE"
  Next shp
End Sub


The code will work with hand drawn shapes. Shapes created by special operations like trim, union, etc. may have more than one geometry section and the code would need to consider them too.
(Section numbers above 10 (=visSectionFirstComponent) and leave the loop on error)


HTH,
Yacine

[wapperdude]

Visio is not a "drawing" app.  You will not find the sort of tools that those types of programs offer.  But that does not mean you cannot be "artistic".  There are numerous examples of artistic designs on this website.  Here's a good example: http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=6095.msg24787#msg24787

The tools at your disposal are basic and include various types of line tools, shape tools, and some freeform.  While painting with a brush is not one of the tools offered, you do have various fills available including gradient and transparency.  Plus, there's a layer tool.  These can by combined to create interesting fill / shading effects.  But no smudge, blur, etc tools.  Not even an eraser per se.  The recent Visio versions do have some interesting effects applied to lines that might qualify as blur or smudge.  Plus, some 3D effects and shadows.

[Nikolay]

Not quite sure if I understand the problem correctly either. What are you trying to achieve? Maybe you could share some screenshots for us?

There is a difference between "vector" drawing apps (like Visio, Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator, etc), that draw using coordinates and shapes and "raster" drawing apps (Adobe Photoshop, Paintbrush, etc), that draw using a pixel grid.
The "flood fill" tool is mostly applicable to "raster" apps. In "vector" apps, to get a filled area, you mostly create a closed contour around it first, and then fill that contour. In Visio as well.