Laura then begins work on an Elevation view by clicking the Elevation tab. This system will be incorporated around an existing fireplace that houses a fish tank filled with many species of fish including a killer crayfish. How a crayfish lives in a saltwater tank is a mystery to scientists. Fortunately Franz took photos of the room while he was at the MacGowan’s house so she has a basis for the drawing. She begins this drawing by dragging a guideline down from the ruler to the page to help line up shapes. To do this, left-click and drag when the cursor turns into a double arrow:
She then right-clicks the Cabinet Tools stencil in the Stencil Tree and selects “Display Docked Stencil”.
The shapes in the Cabinet Tools stencil are displayed in the Shapes window:
She then drags the Floor shape from the stencil to the drawing page:
The Floor shape is resized using the handles on either end of the shape:
The next things that she lays out are the fireplace and existing cabinetry in the room. She begins by dragging out the Mantle Post shape to the page:
To make sure that the mantle is the proper size, she selects View->Size & Position Window:
With the shape selected, she then enters in the proper height in the “Height” field of the Size & Position Window:
She then copies and pastes the shape to represent the other side of the mantle. To assure a proper distance between the mantle posts she drags the Bottom Dimension shape to the page. She types in the dimension in the Size & Position Window and snaps the Bottom Dimension shape to one Mantle Post shape then moves the second Mantle Post into position:
Once positioned correctly, she deletes the Bottom Dimension shape from the page. She continues to drag shapes form the Cabinet Tools stencil to complete the fireplace and cabinets:
She keeps the cabinet bottom on the right open to show where the rack will go and adds a door to the cabinet on the left by right-clicking the shape and selecting “Show Solid Door”:
To remove the shadow from a shape, right-click and uncheck “Show Shadow”:
To fill in the color for the cabinets, she selects each shape then right-clicks and selects Format->Fill:
She then selects “Wood – Zebrawood” from the “Pattern” dropdown:
She then begins work on building the rack. She begins by dragging over the rack and rack components from the PDM to the drawing page:
She begins assembling the rack by first positioning the electronics. Each elevation shape has a connection point for snapping to the connection points on the rack which are spaced out at 1.75” intervals. To see the connection points she selects View->Connection Points:
A red box indicates when two connection points are connected:
She continues positioning the electronic components including the vent at the top of the rack:
Next she drags over the rack shelves and positions them around the components. When a shape covers another shape, she uses the Visio “Bring to Front” and “Send to Back” commands. Clicking once selects the foreground shape:
She pauses then clicks in the center of the shape to select the shape behind the shelf:
She then right-clicks and selects Shape->Bring to Front:
When finished, she selects all of the rack shapes and moves them to the cabinet shape:
She then drags over the plasma and front speakers and positions them:
The final touches are added to the drawing. She uses the Insert->Picture->From file… command to add some images to personalize the drawing for the client:
When finished, the elevation drawing looks like this:
Laura then saves, closes, and Checks in the project.
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