Visio Guy

So, I got curious about animation with visio.
I put together this template.   The help page should outline how to use it.
Note:
   1. It has VB so if nervous about security or me...then dont use
   2. I freely admit its a bit of hack...all feel free to do whatever you want
   3. I make no claims/guarentees about the correctness/robustness of this template.

All that said....have fun....feedback welcomed, though not sure how much time I can divert to updates

kind of surprised how quiet this post is.   ???

I would have thought either some good comments or some scorning comments.

BTW, I did play with this using screen video capture...works pretty well.
So you could actual make a wmv file of the animation and include/launch from other apps. 

Anyway....just surprised at the silence...got more comments on the comm pipe efforts (good and bad)
Has somebody done this before or better (I noted the guys from france
that seemed to require the user to click to advance to next step in animation...I also noted some
code Graham's book....so perhaps somebody did something even better?)?

Quote from: vojo on September 24, 2008, 12:54:26 PM
kind of surprised how quiet this post is.   ???
ham's book....so perhaps somebody did something even better?)?

Sorry, I've only just got around to trying it.
Well, all I can say is wow.

yeah, wow too here, just trying to understand how you do it...  :o

if I move the lines away, the bulls eye still moves along the original path,
how can you make the bulls eye 'stick' to the line? 
Can it also 'follow' cornered lines like the ones below?

that would really beef up some of the images...

(http://www.mqsystems.com/images/clusterwithMQCICS.Png)

put the bullseye (at the same or new sim cycle...aka 5 cycles in) over the new location and
right click==>update step

Today, everytime you turn a corner...need to burn another step and cycle....current the max is 20 / bullseye
I am thinking of using the path/paths property to build a "follow the line" approach.
(really depends on if viewed as valuable and my time allows).

Note that the arc settings allows the shape/bullseye to take an elliptcial path to next point.
So for examle if you wanted to do a circle....set start....set halfway...set end (same as start)...run
once then go into bullseye shapesheet and everywhere in scratchD = 0.33....change to 1
scratchD defines the "ellipticalness" of the arc

Very intriguing!  It took me a while to get up-to-speed, but nice job Vojo.  ;)  This looks like a good topic for Visio Guy to develop and present.   ::)  Not sure everyone realizes there's a zip to download, which you can only see by logging in.  The animation runs very smoothly.  Still trying to absorb it all.   :o

Wapperdude

Hey Vojo --
I wanted to re-visit the comm piping thing, but can't seem to track it down.   :'(

Thanks.
Wapperdude

here you go

remember not for the faint of heart

Very cool stuff vojo!

I've got two items:

1. It's not 100% clear to me what I am animating. Are only bull's eyes animate-able, or am I supposed to put the bull's eye on top of the shape that I want to animate?

2. The animation controls are groups. It's easy to sub-select the bits within the group. You can make it so the sub-shapes don't get selected like this:

  - Select the shape
  - Format > Behavior > Selection = Group only

1.   Bullseye and whatever is joined to that group (add to group).   
      So for example, you could had a server icon to the
      bullseye group....then during animation, both the bullseye and server icon would move
      (help page has an example where a box added to a bullseye...on help page...click the run bar
      and watch it).

2.   Actually cannot since the subshapes act like buttons.   I suppose could let the guy drop button by
      button but that seems tough way to go to me (keep them flat and spaced on the diagram). 
      I would be more inclined to do a menu bar for this
      (did think about it...but the problem was I could not figure out how do the status stuff...sliding
       bar with x of y text).

      if there is another way to do as shapes (for now at least), I am open to it.

You can do the "don't select subshapes" setting on sub-shapes themselves, since you have three levels of grouping. So the button sub-shapes could be set to not allow sub-selection.

You don't have to set this at the top--that would of course make no sense!

fair enough....will play with that tonight.

So I am trying to figure out if this valuable useful.  Right now, there are 2 suggestions:
   - your subshape stuff
   - follow a path option as well others

Will see what I can do with these....other suggestions to make it (more) useful are appreciated.
I dont want this to be some academic exercise...but, rather, something somebody wants to use to solve
a real need they have.   Few of us have the luxory to pursue academic endeavors ;D

Quote from: vojo on September 22, 2008, 12:42:18 PM
So, I got curious about animation with visio.
I put together this template.   The help page should outline how to use it.
Note:
   1. It has VB so if nervous about security or me...then dont use
   2. I freely admit its a bit of hack...all feel free to do whatever you want
   3. I make no claims/guarentees about the correctness/robustness of this template.

All that said....have fun....feedback welcomed, though not sure how much time I can divert to updates

vojo it's great,
i would like learn how do you managed it ?
Do you use VBA codes for animation ?

Used VBA to do the heavy lifting

In essence, the template has a stencil that has the dashboard and some specialized shapes.  You drop the animation shape on the static shape.  You trace the animation shape path (move, right click, add step).  When you run the animation from the dashboard, the VBA moves the animation shape along the path you defined.

There are straight/arced paths, show/hide shape, add/delete steps, etc to select from.  If you want to move the static shape with the animation, add it to the group of the animation shape so the whole thing moves.

I have been thinking (have not had much time to try it out) of using the points function in VBA to have
the animation shape follow the static shape path.  Aka the other way around from adding the static
shape to the animation shape (no need to trace path with steps).

The animation uses the timer function in VBA.   Crude but sufficient.

Obviously, if you look at the VBA, you can tell I am not a programmer per se (actually an engineer) so
I am sure there are slicker ways to code this up.  The rest of the VBA is there to make all this come together (each animation shape holds its own path, determine which shapes are animation shapes, etc).

Feel free to play around with it (add to it or pull out what you need).  Be sure that if you add to it, post
it up here for others to use/enhance.   I do think you need this to be a template so the VBA stays with it (take your static diagram and copy / paste into template then add animation....or....create your static diagram in the template to begin with).

good luck.

Looks like this thread is a little dusty, but here goes anyway.   The animation effect will be very helpful, thanks for posting this little gem.   

But (yea, there's a but)....I use Rockwell Arena to do sophisticated flow/animations with mathematical analysis, without resorting to VB/macros or etc.  Or at least it takes an extremely sophisticated model before you even consider macros. 

Don't get me wrong, I can't live without Visio (it's a fact), just saying some tools are better suited for certain things.  I do plan to incorporate this technique into future drawings.

Thanks again!

NP....use it / abuse it at will....good luck.
If you do take it to the next level....might consider posting here as well

Cool stuff. Lately, I've also been dabbling is some stuff like this using C# instead of VB. I'm making a functional diagram modeling tool that has data flow simulation...very similar to this.

However, and I apologize ahead of time to anyone who is a Visio purist and considers this blasphemy, you can drop your Visio drawings into PowerPoint and do this kind of thing in less than 5 minutes. The animation tools built into PowerPoint are extremely simple to use. Like everyone else on this site that is a fan of Visio, my goal would be to make a similar set of tool for Visio and forego jumping between two apps. But, as it stands today, Power Point is the quickest and easiest option.

sure...you can burn a bunch of PPT slides to do this....aka the old "flipbook" solution.

If it solves your problem...have at it....Only 2 reasons I messed with this was
1.  PPT is a crude as coloring with a crayon when a mech pencils needed.....so really cant do precision animation in PPT
2.  in order to have some fluid motion, would need hundreds of PPT charts to accomplish

If not worried about those issues....have at it

Vojo,
  Not true. It can be done with a single slide. Here it is. I lied...it took me about 7 minutes not 5. ;).
Seriously, give the PPT custom animation a try before knocking it. It really is pretty flexible and powerful. Being an engineer like me, you could probably figure out how to do advanced stuff in ~20 minutes. But, I agree with you, it still isn't an answer for those of us that would like to have that kind of ability available to us in Visio.

Hey JWD!

That's cool.  Didn't know ppt would let you do that -- of course, I never looked.


Wapperdude

note:
1.your red/blue dots jittered (try an irregular arc)
2.Given this simple diagram...it does not show the grid/snap problems in PPT (crayon effect)

If somebody wants to do it in PPT...have at it....after all PPT is really for conveying concepts in a simple fashion...so may be better off with FLASH/BLENDER/etc for anything interesting.

Not trying to push my idea in visio (have not touched in months)...just remember why I did not do in PPT in the first place
(needed this kind of thing for work....ended up just laboriously explaining the given concept with static slides).

Quote from: vojo on September 22, 2008, 12:42:18 PM
So, I got curious about animation with visio.
I put together this template.   The help page should outline how to use it.
Note:
   1. It has VB so if nervous about security or me...then dont use
   2. I freely admit its a bit of hack...all feel free to do whatever you want
   3. I make no claims/guarentees about the correctness/robustness of this template.

All that said....have fun....feedback welcomed, though not sure how much time I can divert to updates

Hey Vojo,

Im sure you've done nice work. However, I have no idea how to use this template I couldnt find th help page and after playin around with the bullseye, i still cldnt make anything work. I use Visio 2010  >:(  :(  :( Please help

its been a long time since I messed with this.

Wont kid you...there is lots of VBA associated with this to make work.
Depending on what you want to do....you could use/extend this effort....or.....could do it as a story board (sheet per view, import each sheet into ppt, use ppt animation to move between slides).

Actually, what spawned this was the realization that nobody on the planet makes a "complete" tool
(visio is great for static precision diagrams and interrelates shapes fairly well....but doesnt do animation well nor 3D well...and even with VBA, cant really do much with shapes per se).
(PPT does animation well.... but crude in diagramming and doesnt do 3d well
(sketchup does 3D well and may do animation well....but no real shape interrelation per se....sketchup is really after the guy who wants to model his yard, house, star wars battle cruiser, etc)
(OO impress/draw does nothing well....talk about a real mess)
(other 3rd party tools are not all that pervasive....so either import static or storyboard in PPT or get more people to buy those licenses)
(of course could go after adobe, blender, etc....but too realistic/intensive for things like network diagrams)
(bottom line no real universal tool per se.....I realize MS would loose a revenue stream but they should really look at marrying PPT and visio....would probably be enough to keep others at bay)

Basically, the second sheet is the help file   (steps and example)

Feel free to modify/change/whatever you want in the template (again I have not done anything on this in over a year...dont plan to...too much going on at my real job).
If you do want to improve it, you may want to rethink how I stored the steps (in scratch cells per shape)....may want to keep a DB of steps by shape...maybe host in an excell workbook.
If excell....could then look at VBA in excell to manipulate values....and might even be able to do 3D to 2D translations....visio would then be just the presentation engine.

Anyway...good luck and have at it

see below

I am newbie on this board and with Visio.  So, I downloaded that animation zip file.  It brought up VISIO and nothing happened.

What did I do wrong?

I have VISIO 2007 (corporate policy).  I am very curious about this and would like to get this working.  Can somebody explain how to get this working?

I would appreciate it very much!

Thanks!

to see example....go to the second page (help) and use the dashboard at the bottom

Like I said...have not done much with this in over a year....feel free to use/abuse at will

Thank you.  I reviewed the Help page and got the diagram to work.  So, now the next logical question.  What is this Animation Dashboard?  Is it a stencil, shape, or what?  Second, what is the Animation Bullseye?

So, this animation process be like another layer over the static diagram?

its part of the template for a couple of reasons
   - There is lots of VBA involved....including a timer to handle the increments
   - All shapes use cells in the page to pace their progress

The dashboard controls all this (single step forward, single step back...actual animation....reset to beginning)

The bullseye allows somebody to add animation to any existing shape
    - basically add the existing shape to the given bullseye....shape will move with bullseye
    - Bullseye approach allows you to add steps in the middle if you want (or take steps away)...right click the bullseye
    - Several types of movement defined
    - Each bullseye shape uses the scratch section to track location for each step in the animation (figured it was better there than to create some sort of ad hoc DB to track all shapes in play)
      (a DB approach - VBA DIM of a multiple dimension array - is probably more sophisticated, but the debug is much tougher...would need to use the msg box alot to make sure tracks as you want)

So with multiple bullseyes on a page....can get several shapes to move.

This is not intended to use layering per se (bullseye current on the same layer as the shapes...never really messed with shapes on different layers...feel free to add that).

Frankly, if you are really interested in this...here is what I would do coming into this new
   - Open up the VBA
   - Look at the first few subs
        - how to get full screen
        - timer behavior
        - single step forward/back
   - Once you think you got that understood, the rest of the subs address specific behaviors
        - adding / deleting steps
        - finding all the shapes on the page that animate and moving them appropriately
        - Arcs vs straight line movement
        - etc
   - Once you have that...then can think about better ways to to go
        - Maybe a VBA DB to track steps  (if you do use this approach...lots to consider)
               - how to extend or shrink....aka assume you started with 10 steps...but now want 11 or 9...how does the DB realign...what gets dropped
               - Would either need to define up front the size of array (or just make a huge one of 100 steps at compile time)....or...thus a variable DIM construct.
               - Number of shapes grows or shrinks (maybe 20 and invalidate if shape dissappears)
               - Index for shape into array
               - So assuming brute force....20 by 1  for name/index   and 20 by 100 for steps...if you want to brute force this.
        - explore layering (might be a nice way to hide/show animation "bullseyes" vs what I did.
        - The current stuff looks at path animation....but could look at shape behavior otherwise
               - change color on step 5
               - change text on step 6
               - even hide / show shape at given step.
        - Place the dashboard in the UI instead of on the sheet  (note the visual progress indicator...probably want to keep that).
     I think the key is going to be the following:
        - Need to make  the fullscreen UI as you want (dashboard or in UI)
        - Need to make a general purpose step engine (the stepping is pretty simple...the approach to manage what shape does what at each step is the question)
        - Need to define some sort of opcode structure so that for a given shape, the opcode defines what is to be done...that way, can extend later if need be
           (for example, if 20 X 100 has each entry as a say 4 elements....op code + 3 pieces of info such as options, X location, Y location....then can add other opcodes as needed)
           
I still think you will want to keep this as a template....I think you probably could make a stencil approach work but there are subtleties.
There maybe enviroment issues on different peoples systems that might cause problems.

All that said, you could gauge the community here to see if a collaborative effort on this would be helpful (aka akin to like open source development)
There are alot of very talented people here...and many are much more fluent with VBA than I am (I'd be the first to say, if you look at my VBA, you can see a brute force approach to this).

Note, there was a french company about 3 years ago that did something similar....I did not look at it in detail since they wanted $$$ for the suite.
But maybe its worth looking at as well.

not sure if some may call it animation however the attached example shows a "Flyover effect" and how I used the Visio environment to create shape movement in a 3D visulisation of GPS data from an underlying database. I did have a "fly through" effect at one stage.

the user is able to use the "helicopter" controls to give it a flyover feel. the VBA environment interrogates the region of the red square and extract the GPS location that fall within its range .. it then plots the GPS data on the slab  and faithfully moves the shapes in accordance with the PAN TILT controls on the custom menu .. users can drill deeper into the regions and the calculated distance of the perimenter is displayed at the sides of the slab in metres... the red arrow always points north .. blue circles denote type A locations while green lines denote type B loactions.

Cheers

Wow Cliff, wow!

The rotating thing is all Visio, correct? I'm guessing the slab was the tricky part, but the points just need to maintain proportional X/Y distances between sides. Got my brain churning... :)

Klar! Mr Roth ;D all VBA coding->  sine cosine tan .. the green poles denote radio sites the blue ovals fibre optic sites.. depending on what angle the tilt \ pan influence is,  the shapesheet formulas adjust the length and height of the respective shapes..the pin x formula of the shapes are also adjusted by the tilt \ pan influence.  your right to say the fade to convergence is outa skew .. the coding to go that extra mile was beyond my scope.

animation in Visio can take many paths.. my limit ( I think)  is somewhere between "Steam Boat Mickey" and "Finding Nemo"  :D

Very nice.....the intriguing piece of this is the rotating of the plane....Can you post the source for this?
Curious about the 3D to 2D translation

Vogo, the demo of the rotating 3D plane is actually three seperate pages. one page is the "graphics engine" with two circles  "pan" and "tilt"  the other two pages are foreground and background. the background page accomadates the "slab" on a layer(which which can be toggled visible\invisible) .. if you watch carefully at the beginning you will also see a faint grey large "X".. these are the "cross hairs"  (essentially just lines) whose angles and rotation formulas are dependent on the "pan tilt" circles..  sounds convoluted  .. yes it was. :-\.. the slab (i think) was glued to the ends of the cross hairs

I will see if I can find some of the source code for you in the near future

Quote from: vojo on April 11, 2011, 08:14:14 PM
Very nice.....the intriguing piece of this is the rotating of the plane....Can you post the source for this?
Curious about the 3D to 2D translation

Public Sub PanLeft()
Dim twist As Double

If ActiveWindow.page = "Page-125" Or ActiveWindow.page = "Background-4" Then
    twist = 0.001
    HaltRotation = Not HaltRotation 'toggle the HaltRotation rotation
    enclosure.Cells("Geometry1.NoShow") = True
    For I = 1 To 1000
    Plan.Cells("angle") = Plan.Cells("angle") - twist
    PanAngle.Formula = Plan.Cells("angle").Formula
    If twist < 0.05 Then
        twist = twist + twist
    End If
    DoEvents
        If HaltRotation Then
            Exit For
        End If
    Next
End If

Quote from: vojo on April 11, 2011, 08:14:14 PM
Very nice.....the intriguing piece of this is the rotating of the plane....Can you post the source for this?
Curious about the 3D to 2D translation

Public Sub TiltUp()
Dim twist As Double

If ActiveWindow.page = "Page-125" Or ActiveWindow.page = "Background-4" Then
    twist = 0.001
    HaltRotation = Not HaltRotation
    enclosure.Cells("Geometry1.NoShow") = True
    For I = 1 To 1000
    Profile.Cells("angle") = Profile.Cells("angle") - twist
        If twist < 0.05 Then
            twist = twist + twist
        End If
        If Profile.Cells("angle") < -1.5707963269998 Then
            Profile.Cells("angle") = -1.5707963269998
            Exit For
        End If
        TiltAngle.Formula = Profile.Cells("angle").Formula
        DoEvents
        If HaltRotation Then
            Exit For
        End If
    Next
    TiltAngle.Formula = Profile.Cells("angle").Formula
End If

Quote from: vojo on April 11, 2011, 08:14:14 PM
Very nice.....the intriguing piece of this is the rotating of the plane....Can you post the source for this?
Curious about the 3D to 2D translation

Vojo, not sure if I can send the lot as there are many sub routines  but maybe you can get some idea from these. sorry I cant be more elaborate. I dont want to inundate the blog.
Cheers!


ratiox = (90 - (Atn(tempx / tempy) * (180 / 3.1415926535898))) & " deg"
    ratioy = (90 + (Atn(tempx / tempy) * (180 / 3.1415926535898))) & " deg"
    location.Cells("PinX").FormulaForce = "ThePage!PageWidth/2+(" & xcord & " mm*(COS(ThePage!Prop.PanAngle -  " & ratiox & ")))"
    location.Cells("PinY").FormulaForce = "ThePage!PageHeight/2-(" & ycord & " mm*(-SIN(ThePage!Prop.PanAngle + " & ratioy & "))*-SIN(ThePage!Prop.TiltAngle))"

np..thx

More interested in the geometry cells of the "table" that rotates.

Playiing with angles just makes the shape rotate on the plane parallel to the computer screen

In the geometry cells, author must be doing some 3D to 2D translations

My guess is that the "rotation" becomes and exercise in building rhombi, essentially skewing the rectangle to varying degrees.

The math for maintaining a point along a line from side to side is then fairly simple algebra which can be done in the ShapeSheet with only minor hair-pulling.

Sure...simple algebra....but translating that into visio geometry where the angles involved are really cos(omega)*sin(gamma) + sin(omega)*cos(gama) are needed to define where the vertexs go is not simple

Ie if its a fixed rombus or games played with width or height to trick the ....that is simple and fair enough....but to rotate, the trig comes into play.

I need to study June's latest...he may have licked the problem I am curious about

Guys its been two years or more since I did this, trying to think back and explain the mechanism in your context is my problem though.
I will look deeper into it , but the "trick" is to have the cross hairs ( the grey faint "X") that you see at the begining of the video. the table top is pinned\ glued to the 4 outside end points of the cross hairs.

the 4 X "skirts" of the rotating plane appear and disappear depending on whether their start extremity is more left (or more right) than their end extremity). 

the trig maths generated by the out-of-sight "graphic engine" adjusts the angles of the "cross hairs"

I dont think its distorting a stationary rectangle in this context, also the blue dots\ green lines  are "injected" into their shapeshhet formulas  so that their PIN X PIN Y can track a "oval" trajectory ...the X Y axis of this ovaloid trajectory is influenced again by referencing the the out-of-sight "graphic engine"

The custom controls "PAN LEFT , PAN RIGHT, TILT UP, TILT DOWN, DEFAULT  and XENITH  use VBA macros to drive the "graphic engine".

I remember my issue at the time was trying to figure out how to have a fade to horizon convergence point which would give it even more realism. But this scope for this ran dry. :'(

snapshots of the graphic engine and the crosshairs shapesheet formulas

sorry ..and this one

I am attempting to get this exampe working in Visio 2013.  No luck.    The controls at the bottom of the drawing do nothing.