There are times in a diagram when you create a number of shapes that must line up, exactly, so that they “look proper”. Visio has a tool that does it exactly right.
Align a row of servers
Lets diagram a number of servers as you see them in a serverfarm. Drag a server onto the page and then “duplicate” it with the Ctrl-D keyboard shortcut. You may have to move it to the right a bit so it doesn’t overlap – it shoudl look approximately like this:
Now lets align these shapes horizontally using Shapes, Align Shapes:
Select the centre on middles. Most of the options here should be obvious.
And now we have a straight line of servers. I think this is a good representation of a server farm.
Other Shapes
The shapes do not have to be identical of course:
will become:
Caveats
If you decide to group shapes together, then the center that is used may not be where you expect. This means that you may have to ungroup shapes to align them correctly.
Other Posts in A Series On The Same Topic
- Network Diagrams: Drawing Overlay Network Layers (14th March 2014)
- Network Diagrams: Choosing Better and Free Fonts (10th January 2014)
- My New Diagram Colour Scheme "Old Disco Style" (24th September 2013)
- On Diagrams and Information (10th September 2013)
- Colour Blindness, Network Diagrams and Reliability (3rd March 2011)
- Designer or Engineer, Artist or Painter (19th January 2010)
- Network Diagrams: Rotating Text on a Line (1st October 2009)
- Network Diagrams: Tips for Printing from Visio (22nd September 2009)
- Network Diagrams:Zones on a diagram with Visio shape union (31st July 2009)
- Network Diagrams: Drawing complex VLAN Networks with IP Addressing (7th July 2009)
- Network Diagrams: Drawing Freehand Curves (and then fixing them) (23rd March 2009)
- Network Diagrams:Aligning Shapes (12th March 2009)
- Network Diagrams:Locking the Background Shape (10th March 2009)
- Network Diagrams: Labelling an VLAN/IP Segment (9th March 2009)
- Network Diagrams: VLANs and IP Subnets (8th March 2009)
- Network Diagrams: Drawing the Background Shape (6th March 2009)
- On the Art of Network Diagrams and Presentation (4th March 2009)
About Greg Ferro
