Visio comes with a great tutorial. Go through the tutorial.

It does not take long ( It should take under an hour) and it will get you started using Visio in no time. To get to the tutorial click on Help then on Microsoft Visio Help and then on Getting Started. I will try to summarize some of the key points and tell you some of the problems I ran into. Visio can be used to draw the following diagrams: Entity-Relationship Flow charts Data flow diagrams Organization charts Gantt charts Pert charts Network Diagrams Office Layouts We will only be drawing E-R diagrams, but feel free to explore the other areas as well. The basic drawing object in a Visio drawing is the shape. Shapes are grouped together in stencils. Stencils are designated by the type of drawing that will work best, for example there is a flowchart stencil for flow diagramming. In addition there are drawing tools that you can use to create basic objects like lines and boxes. There are also styles that allow you to produce special effects to your diagram. Styles include color, fill pattern, and line properties. Each new file is based on a template. A template provides a starting point for your drawing. When you open Visio, you can choose a category. From within the category, choose the template that best meets your needs. A new window will open. Usually the left side of the screen will contain one or more stencils. Each stencil has Master shapes which you can choose to include in your drawing. The right hand side of the window will have the work area. Above these two panes, you will see the familiar Microsoft Toolbars and Menus.

You can choose to use the Block Diagram and the Basic Diagram to draw your E-R diagrams, but since there is a special stencil for Database Models, we will look at that first. Start by clicking on File, New, Database, Database Model Diagram.

Here is what your screen will look like at this point:

Here are the steps use to create the diagram above: 1. Add shapes by either dragging shapes from the stencil or using the drawing tools 2. Click on the view menu, click on zoom and choose one of the magnification sizes in order to get a clearer picture. 3. Move and resize the shapes as necessary. This is a selection handle and it is used to resize a shape 4. Add Text To add text associated to a shape - double click the shape To add independent test click the text tool icon diagram to place the text. and click where on the

To rotate the text Click on on the tool bar, and click on the Text Block Tool. A block will come up around your text (with green handles and you can drag the box around to rotate the text).

Your screen now looks like this:

To change to Crows Foot notation:

(This option only exits in the Database Model Diagram) Click on the Database Menu Item Click on Options Click on Document Click on Relationship and on the Crows feet option Here is your final diagram:

You can also use the flowchart symbols to create the E-R diagram:

Use the to connect two shapes. Do not use the line tool since the connection will not automatically reroute. Place the Connector tool over a connection point on one of the shapes you want to connect.

The Connector tool highlights the connection point with a red box . This visual cue tells you that a connection can be made from that point. Drag the Connector tool from the connection point on the first shape to a connection point on the second shape. The connector endpoints turn red when the shapes are connected. This is an important visual cue. You can drag the green handles to try and reposition the connections to go in the desired direction.

When you place the original connection tool on one of the blue crosses, it will turn red Format Shapes Some Microsoft Visio shapes have control handles that you can use to change the appearance of a shape. Every control handle does something different; just drag it to see what it does. Here are some useful points: To select more than one shape at a time, use shift-click to select the other shape. You can select a whole section of the diagram by starting in a blank area and dragging around the shapes you want to work with. You can zoom in on an area by using control-shift. You can zoom out by using control-w.