Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2003 is my little helper for my lab journals. I am a full time student at my local community college and technical school. I will graduate at the end of the year with two associate degrees; one in Engineering Technology Computer Maintenance Specialization and the other in Electronic Specialization. In many of my classes I have to document all my lab works in a lab journal that must be neat and understandable; Visio gives me the tools that I need to get an A on all my lab journals.

Visio is different from a drawing or CAD program and at the same time it has many features of both. Visio is made for technical people, sales people, marketing, software developers, project managers and more. Visio lets you organize, process, brainstorm, planning, flowcharts and much more.

The Categories

Block Diagram has three areas to choose from; basic, block and block with perspective. Here you will find all kind of designs in forms of blocks, arrows, background and some 3-D.

Brainstorming is just what it says; not much here unless you are into brainstorming.

Building Plan has a lot from electrical to floor plans. There are icons and symbols that make it easy to drag over to the layout of what you want to design including plumbing, office layout, security, access plan and more. This area aids in any type of building plans needed.

Business Process has what is needed in a drawing form from audits to the work flow diagram. A very helpful area for business for giving a presentation.

Charts and Graphs has two areas; charts and graphs and marketing charts and diagrams. Here are many useful tools for all the charts and graphs needed in the business world.

Database is for database presentations; this is an area I haven’t used.

Electrical Engineering has basic electrical, circuits and logic, industrial control systems and systems. This is where I use Visio the most for my lab journals. There are most of the symbols needed for any electronic circuit.

Flowchart is as it says flowcharts with five different areas and dozens of icons for a flow chart presentation.

Map has two areas; directional map and 3-D directional map. This area lets you map out a map with roads, landmarks and much more. The 3-D area has some simple drawings in 3-D.

Mechanical Engineering is in two parts; fluid power and part and assembly drawing. Both areas are as they describe; very helpful for a mechanical engineer.

Network is as it says; this an area I used for my Cisco training to get some icons like routers, switches and hubs for a beautiful presentation for class. I had the best looking presentation for our class, which gave me an A for the grade.

Organization Chart lets you go straight to the charts and jump in there to go to work on a project or the offer a step-by-step wizard to help you out.

Process Engineering has two areas; piping and instrumentation and process flow. This is another engineering area that goes somewhat with mechanical engineering.

Project Schedule here you can actually make a calendar for a week, month or year for personal as well as business. This area helps to setup all kinds of scheduling needs.

Software is an area I haven’t used, but it looks like for software development.

Web Development another area I haven’t used but it looks like it is for laying out a web design.

Electronics
Most of my lab journals are in electronics so when I open up Visio the first thing it wants to know is where I want to go. I start out in the Electrical Engineering; here are four choices to go to, basic electrical, circuits and logics, industrial control systems or systems. This area is for electronics as well as electricity. The good is most of the symbols I need are there, so all I do is drag them over to my layout. The bad is that more symbols need to be added that are common symbols that were left out. I hope a newer version will include more symbols. Don’t get me wrong, there are hundreds of symbols in the electronic section alone, but there are many more that need to be added.

My final words
Visio is a powerful tool weather you are a professional in business or a student in school. There are thousands of symbols and icons for almost any presentation needed in business today. Even when there wasn’t an icon that I needed, Visio is easy to use to create your own icon that looks like a professional icon done by Microsoft.

Visio is more than a program of dragging icons and symbols to a layout for a presentation. You can actually start with a blank page and make a presentation without the use of any of the icons and symbols given. I find that Visio is easier than most drawing programs when you draw toward the business area. I have used Visio for setting up my Algebra formulas sheet and it aids me in my Physics class as well as my computer and electronic needs. This is a very powerful and helpful program for my class work.

I have done some circuits and drawing in Visio and easily copied and pasted them into a word document. This is very helpful when you writing a word document and need to add what you have created in Visio.

I honestly do believe that Visio has been a big aid in my good grades when it comes to a presentation or a lab journal.

Visio is so powerful that I have probably only used about 20 percent of what it has to offer. It has made my life much easier; even though for your first time it is a little different from cad and drawing programs to get use to using. After using Visio a few times, it is easier to remember what to do the next time than on most cad and drawing programs. Visio is not made to be a cad program nor a drawing program for drawing anything you wish; it is a program to help aid technical people, developers, management and more.






Recommended: Yes