Yet another fairly useless manual
This book "Microsoft Office Visio Step by Step" is yet another example of an almost useless manual, that barely duplicates what is available in the online manual for Visio.
It basically consits of screen shots and procedures.
It doesn't sit back and say "well, what might a user want to do here? Oh, you want to create a circle with center and radius? Then look for such and such a shape in such and such a stencil." Etc.
Because it lacks this "meta-contemplation", this manual is only as good as the programmers - it is basically like talking to the programmers, in their mindset. (I'm a programmer: this is NOT good). If what you need to draw is exactly covered by Visio, this manual may help you. If what you need to draw is not exactly covered by one of Visio's pre-packaged setups, this manual is not much help.
I work in an intensely graphical field - VLSI design. But Visio has no pre-packaged setup for my area --- the "electrical engineering" and "digital design" stencils and templates are not very useful. (This opinion confirmed by surveying my fellow engineers at Intel and AMD - all of us want to use Visio, but all find Visio sorely lacking.)
This manual is utterly useless with respect to advanced Visio, e.g. using ShapeSheets to create "smart" shapes.
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Because I have mentioned my employers' names, past and present, I must add this disclaimer: this review is my own personal opinion, not the official position of Intel and AMD.
Although I daresay many engineers at Intel and AMD agree with these sentiments, it may be hard to put this on the record.
Step by Step: Microsoft Office Visio 2003
I really enjoyed going through this book. It is laid out well and has lessons you can do to help you learn.
Just what the title says.
Well organized and easy to study. Suits multiple learning styles. The CD has some excellent additional information.
Good tutorial for non-database functionality
This is a well-written and easily understood intro to Visio, which does a good job of covering diagrams, flowcharts, Gantt charts, floorplans, and the like. But, it has absolutely no information on building database diagrams with Visio, for which I deducted a star.
