Any examples of using Visio to document software?

Question

I have Visio 2010 and want to learn how to use it to document software. Does anyone have examples of what Visio does well?

Are there any things that Visio can do, but there are better tools for the job?

What are your experiences?

Answer 1

I don't know much about Visio but from what I have seen it seems as though you might be able to mimic on some level UML. Either way I would highly recommend learning how to use UML for this documentation as its more or less the standard for documentation. I would highly recommend using astah community as its very easy to use to model different aspects of UML. It can be downloaded here: http://astah.change-vision.com/en/product/astah-community.html

Answer 2

I use Visio primarily for UML diagrams but you can do a lot more in the professional version including desinging Application interfaces. I have seen a few examples of UML documentation online , try a google image search. Typically you use Visio to "design" the product, not document it. Of course, you will probably end up adding the Visio diagrams to your document but that isnt its primary purpose(unless you are documenting undocumented code). Visio definetly requires a learning time . If you are only looking for UML look at freeware tools such as StarUML which are really good.

Answer 3

I'm afraid I don't have concrete examples to share, but I have used Visio to document software. It was at my previous place of employment, so they have all the docs!

What I used it for was to map out the flow of data and other process flows, to help explain things such as typical user <-> interface interactions and how the system's various components (DB, BL layer, front end) interact.

I found it really easy to use, as it has a huge repository of images for any component you can think of, and drawing arrows between things is really easy. It also allows you to export your diagram as a png, so you can easily embed it into a web page.