Old Visio Map Shapes?

shayneneal · September 27, 2008, 11:14:47 AM

I have a whole lot of old Visio CDs I have collected over the years (I find it difficult to throw things away) and I just found a need to do a diagram with maps and cannot find any maps on my Visio 2003 or Visio 2007 shapes. I went online and found a bunch of Continent maps (not even accurate) and was wondering if anyone remembered which version of Visio had the maps of all the countries (North America for sure) and also all the shape file maps of all 50 states of the USA?

Thanks,

Shayne

wapperdude · September 27, 2008, 03:41:31 PM

They were included on the Visio 4.1 Technical release, in the subdirectory Standard. I don't have anything between that and V2003.

Wapperdude

Paul Herber · September 27, 2008, 06:28:25 PM

They were in Visio 2000, I think there might have been a few country shapes with boundary disputes, it's easier to drop the whole lot in cases like that.
If you have the CD for 2000 you should just be able to copy the stencils without installing other files. Yes, I've just checked, they are in the folder Install\bin\Program Files\Visio\Solutions\Map

Visio Guy · September 27, 2008, 11:15:16 PM

The Visio Guy web-site might save you a bit of time, messing with old CDs.

Check out these articles (with downloads!)

And for future reference:

Visio Guy: Maps & Geography Category

And yes, I think Microsoft's legal department required the removal of China and India from the shape set due to boundary disputes. The software would be illegal to sell in these countries! (or so the rumor goes - I can't verify it)

I suppose I should build a Smart China and Smart India shape, where the user can right-click and choose which border he believes in...

shayneneal · October 03, 2008, 05:18:03 PM

Thanks for the help. I found them and immediately started with issues.

I laid down a map of the USA and then started plopping down the 50 states and they seem to be in different scales? Does this make sense to anyone? I know that I did this exact thing years ago and it worked flawlessly. I built some very nice pages for my children to play with as we homeschool and it was a very good way to test their geography of their home continent. It is not going to be so easy now if I can't fix this sizing issue.

Shayne

wapperdude · October 03, 2008, 10:25:01 PM

Do a cntl-A to select the entire map drawing, then group everything, and finally right click > format > protection > aspect ratio.

Go to menu bar > view > Size and Position window. With the entire group selected, there should be values in all of the placeholders. Choose either width or height entries, divide that number by 1.1919685, e.g., xxx/1.1919685 in. Where xxx is the width value. This will reduce the entire map size to match the individual component shapes. You can ungroup the main drawing now. You are free to walk about the country.

Where did the 1.1919685 come from? Before I did anything, with the S&P Window open, I selected Calif. Looked at the width value, e.g., AAA in. Then I drug the Ca shape onto the drawing page. It's width was BBB. Did calculation AAA/BBB = CCC = 1.1919685. You know what's coming...it's as easy ABC, 123...

HTH
Wapperdude

("I kill me! Ha." ...and I'm really bored right now.)

Paul Herber · October 03, 2008, 10:47:48 PM

I was thinking about asking whether you were using the inch or metric versions of the US maps, that started me laughing at the idea of a "metric" Texas.

shayneneal · October 03, 2008, 10:48:07 PM

Are you saying that your country and states are different as well?

Shayne

wapperdude · October 03, 2008, 10:54:25 PM

While a metric Texas is funny (anything that insults Texas is funny since I'm from CA., unfortunately, unless it's just a difference is sheet sizes, the 1.19 factor doesn't seem to be related to US vs non-US, oops, metric units. I didn't try playing around with different page sizes, since I assumed Shayne would be using US standard sizes.

shayneneal · October 07, 2008, 03:26:04 PM

I used a couple different units in the documents when I tried opening the maps but both provided differing sizes for the countries and the states/provinces of US and Canada. Is there anything that could have caused the shapes to change by the way I opened the document(re: scales or measurement units) or could the difference be coming due to the fact that the shapes are Visio 2000 objects?

Shayne