vsd flow charts

[Zeller, Barbara]

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question. Sorry about the delay in MY
response since I posted the question. Been away from work. I appreciated all
the tips I got. For this situation, I ended up importing the Visio drawings
as PDFs and it worked great! 
 
Thanks again,
Barbara Zeller

-----Original Message-----
From: Combs, Richard [mailto:richard.combs at polycom.com] 
Sent: Friday, January 08, 2010 1:06 PM
To: Zeller, Barbara; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: vsd flow charts

Zeller, Barbara asked: 
 
> What is the best way to import flow charts from Visio (.vsd) into 
> FrameMaker?
> I'm getting some pretty fuzzy results. I am working in Frame 7.2.
Would
> appreciate any tips.

If the results are fuzzy, I'm guessing you're exporting to JPEG, probably the
worst choice (it's for photos, not drawings). But any raster (bitmap) image
format is a bad idea. And Visio's export filters (including those suitable
for vector graphics -- EPS and WMF/EMF) have a poor reputation. 

IMHO, PDF is by far the best option. If you have a recent full version of
Acrobat, and it was installed after Office/Visio, it should have installed
the PDFMaker plug-in, adding PDF buttons and menu to your Office apps,
including Visio. That makes it dead simple; once you set PDF options once, it
will take just a button click to create a new PDF when you change the
drawing. 

If that's not your situation, but you have Distiller, you can print your
Visio drawings to the Adobe PDF printer. 

In either case, if your Visio files contain multiple drawings, the PDF will
contain multiple pages. In FM, when you select a multi-page PDF to import, a
dialog appears in which you choose the page you want (there's a preview if
you've forgotten the page number). 

Helpful hint: When you create Visio drawings for import into FM, figure out
what size you want them to be on the FM page, and make the drawing page that
size (e.g., if you want them to span a 6" text column, then in Visio, use a
custom page 6" wide). It will simplify your life if your drawings don't need
to be scaled on import. 

HTH!

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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