Importing Visio drawings into FM (was RE: Cannot invoke OLE server?)

[Combs, Richard]

Andrew Becraft wrote: 

> Rick Quatro wrote:
> > I am not familiar with Visio, so I can't suggest a graphic 
> format, but 
> > perhaps you can use EPS or PDF.
> 
> I've never had good luck with embedding my Visio diagrams as 
> OLE objects. I've generally used WMF, but sometimes Visio 
> refuses to save as WMF and I have to use EMF or EPS instead.

Older versions of Visio had some notoriously bad export filters,
especially for EPS. I don't know about Visio 2003's filters. I've only
been using it a few months, and I don't export graphics files from it. I
use -- and strongly recommend -- PDF. 

When I upgraded to Acrobat 7, it found Visio (along with other Office
applications) and integrated itself -- adding a menu with PDF create and
config commands, buttons to create PDFs, etc. It works flawlessly and
lets me create multipage PDFs from my multipage drawings (I have some
Visio files with a dozen or more pages each). Then, in FM, I choose the
PDF from which to import (by ref, of course) and the specific page. 

In no time at all, I imported about four dozen flow diagrams from five
different PDFs created from multipage Visio files. Now that they're in
FM, when I change a drawing, I just click a button to recreate the PDF
(overwriting the existing one), and my FM file is updated. 

You need Acro 7 to get the Visio integration (and, I believe, Visio 2003
or 2002). You can do the same workflow with earlier versions, but it
requires printing to Distiller -- not quite as effortless, and you don't
have some of the advanced options, such as maintaining layers, links,
and metadata. 

HTH!
Richard


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Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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