[116063] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Visio diag automations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Hicks)
Sat Jul 18 06:55:33 2009
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:55:21 +0100
From: Peter Hicks <peter.hicks@poggs.co.uk>
To: Bobby Mac <bobbyjim@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <c3de0a330907171217p6b91ac0an7978d0a97fb246a6@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Bobby Mac wrote:
> I have to create Visio diagrams for sales engagements for a webhosting
> provider. I use the same template based on our standard architecture but
> vary the number/model/detail of the servers. I am sick of the cut-n-paste
> approach and am wondering who has automated some of these processes. What I
> would like to do is provide a standard data file (excel, csv, ect..) and
> have that populate the detailed areas of the diagram. My boss won't pay for
> any software but I can use open source under XP or cygwin.
I attempted to do data-driven diagrams with Visio, but quickly gave up.
I don't think Visio is the right tool for the job.
Have you thought about writing the diagram in HTML+CSS and laying it out
that way?
Diagramming is one of the biggest problems I've had in the 10+ years
I've been doing networking.
Poggs
