I use it constantly to create all of my network diagrams for every network I create.īut what do you do if you don’t have Visio?!?! Visio isn’t cheap software and not every network engineer can afford to buy it… and most small businesses may not be able to afford the cost either. Just keep it subtle.If you’re like me your biggest tool that you use day to day is Visio. Then, as the very last thing, tweak the positioning to make it look neat.ĥ) Very pale coloured blocks (no borders) behind functional groups of shapes (eg, "Data Centre Switches", "Core Routers" etc) help to make the diagram easier to read and can look quite classy. Hell, I still tend to sketch it out on paper first before I even fire up Visio. What connects to what, which groups of shapes should be where etc.
I'll choose which ones to connect, dammit!Ĥ) Get the basic design done right first. I always turn off AutoConnect because it pisses me off. The Position/Align Shapes feature is great and always has been. But they still take me by surprise sometimes as they behave differently to older versions. And use connectors between shapes rather than just lines (I'm sure you're doing that, right?) Connectors are on their own layer which can be an easy way of selecting them without selecting anything else.ģ) Auto Align & Space in Visio 2010 works pretty well as does the Dynamic Grid.
If, instead, you prefer right-angle lines, it can be neater if you put a load of connection points evenly spaced all around the edge of each shape and you can then space out the lines connecting them.Ģ) Use layers.
Do it once and save the shapes to a shape template so you can re-use them. If you're going to use straight lines between shapes (switches, routers etc) then put a connection point in the middle of each entity. 1) Learn about how Visio uses connection points (the little blue crosses that lines connect to).
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