Animating Complex Diagrams

[AllenDiesel]

Hi all.

Im currently making wiring diagrams for diesel trucks using MS Visio.
I would like the be able to add some mouse hover animations or mouse hover image popups...
If I hover over a shape of mine, id like to be able for a box to pop up with what the actual shape looks like (like a png file)
Also, hovering over or clicking a certain wire will highlight the wire and show the whole path.

Having this happen when saving to PDF form seems impossible? Maybe I can do this with exporting to html..
Im not too sure.. Is this something VISIO can do? Do I need a certain plugin? Should I use a different program to acheive this?

Any help is appreciated.

[vojo]

a couple of things that wont solve your problem
1)  You can set up right click to present a menu of activities you want to do with the shape
2)  You can set hyperlinks to other shapes or pages to give details (triggered by 1,3,4)
3)  Can you set up double click to launch activities
4)  There is an obscure command in shapesheet call docmd(<xxxx>) that, among other things, open shape
      in new window.

Note...all 4 are based on shapesheet formulas...so would need to set up the shape's shapesheet to
accomplish.

That said, I honestly don't know if visio will do this for you, but PDF has a mode  (PDF /A  I think) that will bring hyperlinks and allow to jump around within PDF.  I know it works with PPT for sure 
(powerpoint 2010 or later).   Its usually in the Save as PDF options menu.

[wapperdude]

There are various, unrelated features to this task.  Some readily do-able, others less obvious, and at least one takes coding.

First, layers could be used but not recommended...would need a layer per "part" to show descriptive text + picture.  Another approach would be using the dblclick cell of the  shapesheet events section of the "part" to do the show/hide.  In addition, enter a User Defined entry, maybe call it User.shwHide and set its value to False, no quotes, it's a Boolean value.

So, the dblclick would be:  setf(getref(User.shwHide),not(User.shwHide)).  This causes the User cell toggle True and False.

Now, suppose your part is sheet.1.  You add a picture of it.  In the picture shapesheet, scroll to the Image Properties section, Transparency cell and enter formula = "IF(Sheet.1!User.shwHide, 0%,100%).  This will toggle picture on/off.

Finally, to allow arbitrary placement of the part image and slave it to the part shape, utilitzes SETATREF function.  See http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=6383.msg26308#msg26308

Let's say that you add text to the picture.  Then in Sheet.1 go to the Miscellaneous section, Hide Text and enter formula = Not(Sheet.1!User.shwHide).  This will toggle the text visibility. 


With respect to showing the routes, that's the most difficult part.  It can be down via code development.  This post ought to provide an idea what can be done:  http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=6373.0

HTH
Wapperdude

[wapperdude]

Not able to modify my post...

The "Add Text" is done in the picture shapesheet, not Sheet.1.  That was a mis-statement. 

The attached file shows all of the features except the route highlighting.

Failed to indicate that the Setatref formulas are in the PinX and PinY cells.  They require the addition of two User Entries, shown as User.MyPX and User.MyPY.

Sorry for confusion.

[Yacine]

http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7642.0
http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=6012.0

[wapperdude]

@Yacine:  my apologies, "Mr. Spookiness"   

I totally forgot about that 2nd link.  It's still spooky...in a very good way...and still really cool.

[AllenDiesel]

http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7642.0
http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=6012.0

@Yacine

Im very interested in the hover macro you discussed in one of these threads.
The file you have there unfortunately is not compatible with my 2016 version of Visio.

Also, for these macros to display properly... the file would have to be saved as html and not a pdf, right?

[vojo]

Are you guys saying that the old "tag" function no longer works
(hover function on shape)

[AllenDiesel]

@vojo

I believe so, yes.

[Yacine]

@Allen,
The hover macro was a fine excercise, but I wouldn't it recommend for real work.

Everybody is nowadays going towards web technologies. I believe that Javascript is the way to go.
Visio is not a good presentation software. I think using it for creating the drawings is fine, but for distributing the work and offering an interactive experience either go for web or pdf.
My personal preference is definitely the web, despite we had some cool pdf macros these days ... metuemre was the specialist if I remember well:
http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7714.0
http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?action=profile;u=18346.

The web thing is Nicolay's reign.

I do however have some cool tools if you want to highlite certain paths and export the results to images. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpKFGgEjGPg

Cheers,
Y.

[wapperdude]

While I do agree that Visio isn't the best presentation tool, since, to leverage all features requires that it be installed on the presentation machine, it isn't impossible.  PDF files are a possibility, but, limited, and Visio doesn't always port to PDF very cleanly.  I've not tried the web approach, but that seems like a good way.

Nonetheless, I had a file that does something similar to your desired goal within Visio.  It uses a double click on the shapes to highlight the paths.  So, that would mean some re-formulating to also accommodate the show/hide image/text goal.  Provided here as is...

[Nikolay]

http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7642.0

Dear Allen,

Regarding my extension - I still support it.
I've had one customer who used it to create a truck electric schematics (similar to this sample). The "office" sample with tips is here, hopefully looks somewhat like you describe.

The tips with pictures can be done as described on the site, or now there is also a fee "companion" extension to edit in-place HTML (kudos to GFT that supported the development, allowing to make it open source at the same time), but it is not published properly on my site (yet?) Planning to do something about it, but now I've moved a bit aside from Visio, so will be doing it only when I could.
The latest installer build of that extension is here.

In particular, it allows one simple thing: edit shape tip/popup as HTML (including "insert picture" and bold/italics/headers/colors) and save the result in shape property (by default that's Comment). Btw, it may also be usable to allow formatting for reports.
Here is the short GIF how it works together, maybe you can also find it useful/worthwhile. Beware of bugs (but they shouldn't be that big)

The html extension itself is on the website, as described in the link above. I've attached the video how I did the sample below.
The result is here: https://cdn.rawgit.com/nbelyh/svgpublishdemo/b051a72/simple-edited-tips.html
The source file is attached.

The color, background, size, border, etc of the tips can now be only controlled with CSS (you'll need to write a couple of lines of CSS to make picture big/green/whatever)
There are no settings for that, there are only settings regarding position and mouse behavior (mouse / tablet)

[AllenDiesel]

@Nikolay

http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7642.0

Dear Allen,

Regarding my extension - I still support it.
I've had one customer who used it to create a truck electric schematics (similar to this sample). The "office" sample with tips is here, hopefully looks somewhat like you describe.

this is EXACTLY what i'm looking for.

Would you mind if we chatted over PM?




Thanks,
Allen

[Nikolay]

Dear Allen,

Sure, feel free to contact me directly as well - no prob.

BTW, last time for a similar diagram we faced an issue with "stripped" wires. (Like, a white wire with diagonal black hatches, implemented as "custom line pattern").
This type of stripped wires is known not to show up properly (is is not exported properly). But hopefully you don't have something like that

[wapperdude]

Well, for the sake of completeness, this is possible entirely within Visio.  See attached.
>  Double click any 2D shape will highlight all paths and shapes associated with it.  At same time, "dims" all other shapes, but keeps them visible.  Easily changed if "hidden" is preferred.

> Right click a 2D shape, and pop-up menu to select visibility of a Descriptive shape.  Only implemented for Sheet.22. 

This is a simple demo of what might be done, for those interested...guess that's me.