Microsoft Office VISIO 2021: Connectors

Name: Microsoft Office VISIO 2021: Connectors
Author: Ali Green

Create connections between shapes to modify your diagrams using the AutoConnect and connection points features

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, this is Ali Green, and in this lesson we're going to explore our autoconnect our connection points, and our dynamic grid. Whenever we're talking about our autoconnect it's an easy way for us to connect our shapes and have a connection in-between those two shapes. And also with our connection points we can see the places where we can make connections at. Let's come up to the top. Come on over to file and come down to new. And under new, we're going to come over to our basic diagram. Let's click on our basic diagram and let's click on create. Now we have our new page with our basic shapes. We're going to drag over a square, and a circle. And what if we wanna connect the two? So right now there's no automatic connection points that pop up. Now for the basic shapes we're gonna come up to view, and we'll see here we have basic grid connection points and our autoconnect. Let's click on autoconnect. So now when we hover over our shapes we're gonna get the four way arrows on the side. Let's connect our circle. So we're gonna hover on our circle, drag it and not let it go. Look for the four way arrows, drag it over to the right, it'll slightly darken and we let it go. So there's our connection. Also, we're gonna hover on the arrows at the top and get four shapes. And these are gonna be the first four shapes at the top. So we'll hover, click on the square, and there we go right there. Okay, so we've turned that on and we can see those four shapes. Now also, if we grab a square over and we wanna align the position by the center by the top or by the bottom, we'll see these green arrows. And also the green arrows will tell us about an even amount of space between our shapes. And that's gonna be our dynamic grid. So if we turn the dynamic grid off, hover on our shapes, you'll notice those green lines disappear. And if we click on dynamic grid, come back over those green lines will come back. Now as far as our connection points, where do the lines, the connectors connect? We have our connection points at the top. Let's come over to home and let's click on connector. So now when we click on connector and we hover over our shape, you'll see these gray boxes. Come back to view, turn off connection points, and those great boxes will no longer show up but the connections will. So we'll turn those back on and those gray boxes come back. And we can connect from any point of our gray box, we can grab from one side to the other and connect our shapes. What if we wanted to add more gray connectors? Come on over to home, click on pointer tool and grab your square over, and to the right of connector is a little X. We're gonna click on that X for the connection point, hover over our shape, and we're gonna hold down control, and we'll get across here, and we're gonna click in this area, click on the left, click on the side, and click on the side here. Click on the side and click on the side. Now, if you hover and you grab your connector and we hover over our connection points, we now have more connection points. And what if we wanted to save this shape? Come over to the pointer tool, work your way over to left, more shapes, new stencil. And with this shape we can drag our square under our new stencil, and we'll call this, square with more connections. And we can easily just save our stencil if we need to. I simply hit the save button, navigate to our knowledge city folder, put in our initials and call this one connector, our connections stencil, and let's hit save. So those are our autoconnect and our connection points and we also talked about the dynamic grid and we also created a new stencil to save our shape with more connectors. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next lesson.

Beginner Provider : Ali Green 3 Lessons · 13m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

In these lessons, you’ll learn how to connect shapes together using Visio’s AutoConnect function. We’ll show you how to use connection points to determine where on a shape the connection should go. We’ll also go over how to add colors and special effects to your connectors, and how to change connector types to reflect different sorts of relationships.

What You'll Learn

Connect shapes on a diagram together using Visio's AutoConnect function
Use connection points to determine where on a shape a connection attaches
Apply colors and special effects to designate different types of connections
Format connectors to improve the appearance of a diagram
Change connector types to reflect different sorts of relationships
Explore the various types of connectors available in Visio

Key Takeaways

Visio's AutoConnect function lets you connect shapes together on a diagram.
Connection points determine where on a shape a connection should go.
Colors and special effects can be applied to connectors to designate different types of connections.
Connector types can be changed to reflect different sorts of relationships.
The course covers exploring the various types of connectors in Visio.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this Microsoft Office Visio 2021: Connectors course?

You'll learn how to connect shapes together using Visio's AutoConnect function, how to use connection points to determine where a connection attaches, how to add colors and special effects to connectors, and how to change connector types to reflect different sorts of relationships.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons cover Exploring the AutoConnect and Connection Points, Formatting Connectors, and Exploring the Various Types of Connectors.

What skills does this course help build?

This course covers skills including Communication Diagrams, Diagramming Software, Microsoft Visio, Network Diagrams, Object Diagram, and Object Linking And Embedding (OLE).

What is the focus of this course?

The focus is on connectors in Visio, including connecting shapes with AutoConnect, using connection points, formatting connectors with colors and special effects, and using different connector types for different relationships.