About Visio integration

Overview

Blueprint supports the ability to import and export Microsoft Visio diagrams.

About importing Visio diagrams

You can import Visio diagrams into the following artifact types:

When you import a Visio diagram, Blueprint substitutes your Visio shapes with matches that exist on the palette. In cases where a suitable Blueprint shape does not exist, the original Visio shape is imported as an external shape.

Note: Blueprint does not currently support importing rich text formatting in shapes from Visio. Instead, text is imported with plain text formatting.

About External Shapes

An external shape is a Microsoft Visio shape that has been imported as a vector or bitmap image and has not been replaced by an equivalent shape on the Blueprint palette.

The differences between vector images and bitmap images are as follows:

Vector Bitmap
  • Has a transparent background
  • Has an opaque background
  • Quality is not diminished when the image is resized
  • Quality is diminished when the image is resized
  • Can be edited with the following tools:
    • Drawing tools (Editor Tools tab, Drawing group)
    • Font tools (Editor Tools tab, Font group)
    • Paragraph tools (Editor Tools tab, Paragraph group)
  • Image cannot be edited using the following Blueprint tools:
    • Drawing tools (Editor Tools tab, Drawing group)
    • Font tools (Editor Tools tab, Font group)
    • Paragraph tools (Editor Tools tab, Paragraph group)
  • Print quality is diminished

About exporting Visio diagrams

You can export any of the following diagrams in Visio 2010, 2013, or 2016:

Blueprint exports diagrams in Visio drawing format, .vsd.

Tasks

Importing a Visio diagram

Exporting a diagram to Visio

Configuring elevated trust in-browser

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Importing and Exporting