I found this really nifty USB symbol SVG graphic at www.openclipart.org (http://www.openclipart.org) and opened it in Visio. The top image is the original and the bottom is how the file was rendered in Visio. The circle that is white in the Visio image had a gray gradient fill in the original file.
Does anyone know how to fake a gradient fill for the white circle? Does 2007 have any additional functionality in this area?
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve,
You can get pretty close with Visio, despite its "not supposed to be able to" :)
Two techniques will help.
1. Off-center Radial Fill Effect (http://www.visguy.com/2007/08/30/off-center-radial-fill-effect/)
2. Using the ShapeSheet to specify different transparency levels for the fill foreground and the fill background. This isn't available through the UI's Fill dialog, but you can, say get a white gradient fill that goes from 25% transparent to 100% transparent. This makes for nice highlights.
Oh, and on a related note, check out the USB Stick Shape (http://www.visguy.com/tag/usb/) on Visio Guy...:)
That's right. I remember that now. I think technique is what I'm struggling with most (How to achieve the desired outcome with the available capabilities). Sounds like a great book idea!
Thanks for share your knowledge and expertise.
Steve
Just as a follow-up, I reviewed the SVG 1.0 specification. My understanding is Visio does not support fully support the SVG 1.0 standard.
Makes sense to me. There are certain graphical effects that Visio just can't do, unfortunately.