Visio Auto-draw and hand-draw topology diagrams

drawing the topology plainlyNetwork topology is a network of physical or logical structure diagram, with a detailed and accurate network topology map for the construction of network and maintenance network is very helpful, wiring can be arranged according to the topology map to improve the construction speed of network facilities, and maintenance party can also be based on the topology to quickly and accurately find the network failure problem.

How to draw a detailed network topology diagram. There are two main methods at present. One is the use of network management tools to automatically draw, although this method can save a lot of drawing work, but there is one of the biggest drawbacks. That is, the Webmaster tools require vendor support, which means that you can only use Cisco's Webmaster tools to automatically draw Cisco devices, and not to discover other vendors ' devices on the network. If your company has a unified purchase of the same company's network equipment, then the automatic drawing method will be very suitable for you. However, the general company's equipment brand is not the same, we can only use the following method to establish a network topology diagram, that is, hand-drawn.

VISIO2003 is the best in hand-drawn tools, and he is a professional drawing tool produced by Microsoft, through which he can draw dozens of charts, including network topology, network structure, architectural drawings, mechanical engineering diagrams, maps, The simple and easy-to-use features of the Office family are also inherited from the operation, and we can draw on the professional network topology diagram by dragging and dropping. The entire software capacity is 350MB, software installation and other products of Microsoft Company, the "next". Because the software is very simple to get started, the operation is very intuitive, so this article only for you to introduce some of his basic use, more application skills are still to be found in the actual reader.

Start the interface chapter:
We start with the-> program through the taskbar-> MICROSOFT office-> MICROSOFT OFFICE VISIO 2003 "launches the software.

The software interface, as shown in Figure 1, is not like the office style. Initial launch we need to select a category we need from the "Choose drawing Type" on the left. Of course, here we choose "Network" can. After the selection, several categories appear in the middle area, allowing us to choose further. (Figure 2) in general, we commonly used is the latter three, that is, the rack diagram (for the server rack to identify the line), the basic Network diagram, detailed network diagram, each category provided to our device logo are different, we can choose according to the actual needs. For example, we select the Detailed network diagram.

To draw an article:
After you have chosen, you will be introduced to the specific drawing interface, but before entering the drawing interface, the software reminds you whether to download the latest device icon resources from the official Office website. (Figure 3)

The drawing interface is shown in Figure 4, the middle area is the plot area, the left side is the available device icon area, we can drag and drop the device to the left to add to the drawing area. For some devices that need to be labeled we can also add specific models and descriptions to the device by using the "annotations" and "callouts" on the left. In addition, for some of the device icons we often encounter can also be saved by right-clicking on the icon and selecting "Add to My Shapes-> favorites", and then we can go directly from "File-> shape-> My shape-> favorites" Quickly call the common device icon.

Tips:
If you are not satisfied with the default background and style, you can also set your own style by "border and title" in the left area, so that the network topology map can be more affinity and more beautiful. It can also add hyperlinks to the devices on the network topology diagram, and can access the management interface of the device by simply clicking on a device, which makes the electronic version of the network topology diagram more powerful and goes beyond the traditional paper topology diagram.

Summary:
Do you feel that the network topology diagram is no longer mysterious through this article? Microsoft's products are so easy to get started with. In fact, Visio has a lot more powerful features, for example, when many departments have similar network topologies, you can draw one first, then combine all the devices and then copy them uniformly. In addition, its own automatic generation device labeling function has been favored by many people. It is believed that with the increase in usage time you will be able to create professional-grade network topology diagrams from Visio.