Help on making a chart...

[Manos2610]

Hello all!

I am new to this board and I would like some help since I'm fairly new to the whole Visio program.
So, I'm trying to develop a pretty elaborate flowchart for work, highlighting all the functions in my transportation maintenance department. I am trying to make one that is interactive, one that allows you to learn more about the odds and ends of the programs in my department, detailing everything that goes on behind that said program, and what kind of relationships they might have with one another. All of this by clicking buttons to access certain charts and shapes.

Just as an example, let's say I'm making a set of flowcharts that contain two programs: the Snow & Ice program and the Bridge program. I would make flowcharts of the operation cycles behind them, and some of the positive and negative impacts they may have on OTHER programs, like having Snow & Ice impacting the Bridge program for instance, where laying down salt and plowing a bridge can eat away at the steel and concrete components, rendering them less stable. The relationships would be based on any characteristics in a table kind of thing.

Using that kind of negative impact I detailed above, I would set up something very similar to Access where you make relationships in tables and queries based on matching properties, except now, shapes of any group of flowcharts can be connected to each other based on a given relationship, whether in the same file or not. In this case, the salt impact is one of the important relationships between the Snow & Ice program, and the Bridge program. Using relationships like these, I can make something where anyone could easily learn the basics of a transportation program, why they have the program, what kind of things it could have an influence on another program. It would be like if there were less truck drivers out in the highway because there was a parts shortage in an electronics company.

I only have the Standard version of Visio, so I am not sure if I need another version, or if this is something outside the realm of what Visio or any other Microsoft program can do. I hope this all makes sense. If not, feel free to ask any questions. Thanks!

[wapperdude]

This is a very ambitious undertaking.  Visio might  be  an acceptable user interface.  But, I don't think you want to make this an all inclusive file.  Such a file would be much to large, so using some sort of database concept seems more appropriate.

You can do a top level flow chart, then, drill down thru  shape, pulling up whatever support doc might be necessary.  I don't do database sort of things, but I believe some people have  used Visio as the entry point, but, there are probably database specific tools that are more appropriate for this sort of thing.

Wapperdude

[Yacine]

Hi Manos,
I had some time to play with the idea, so I set up a pair of files to implement your idea.
Start the macro "relations" and click the button relations.
This will show the items directly related to the source item.
Selecting one of the related items and clicking the button, will set this item as source and show its relations.
If no item is selected then the source item becomes the source again.

The solution consists of an Access database with 2 tables - items and relations. Where relations link to other elements within the items table.
Both tables have columns to hold longer descriptions, so as to fulfill your initial wish to provide deep information on the items of your knowledge base.

For me it was just an interesting challenge, for you however I wonder if a simple mindmapping tool wouldn't be the better alternative as it comes out of the box with plenty of functions (links between nodes, external links, images and so on.) Have a look at FreeMind.

Rgds,
Yacine