Templates / Stencils / Extensions

Well, Doug, the stencils that say you have to have Microsoft Visio - that's what you have to get in order to open them. You can try Microsoft Office if you have it, but .vss is a proprietary format and I don't think non-microsoft products will open it.

Some CISCO stencils might be in .emf and .wmf fornats. If they are simple graphics Inkscape should have a fairly good chance of opening them, but dimensions might be a little out of whack.

Your very best bet is to look for stencils in the PDF format if you can't find any in SVG. If you can find them in a .doc format you can save them from Openoffice or Word as a PDF and open them in Inkscape that way.

On 3/10/2013 7:11 AM, Dru wrote:
> Your question #223841 on Inkscape changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape/+question/223841
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Dru proposed the following answer:
> Well, Doug, the stencils that say you have to have Microsoft Visio -
> that's what you have to get in order to open them. You can try Microsoft
> Office if you have it, but .vss is a proprietary format and I don't
> think non-microsoft products will open it.
>
> Some CISCO stencils might be in .emf and .wmf fornats. If they are
> simple graphics Inkscape should have a fairly good chance of opening
> them, but dimensions might be a little out of whack.
>
> Your very best bet is to look for stencils in the PDF format if you
> can't find any in SVG. If you can find them in a .doc format you can
> save them from Openoffice or Word as a PDF and open them in Inkscape
> that way.
>
Thanks Dru. I know that Visio can read *.Svg files as well as the .Vss
files and use them interactively, so I was hoping that some one would
have ported the Cisco Stencils over as well. Those stencils are created
by Cisco for Visio or at least historically that was the case. DIA also
has Cisco Stencils, but not as many as Visio does.

Now about the second part of the questions I submitted, If I were to
create my own Cisco drawing or other drawings that I wanted to catalog
as a group and then be able to view and select them for future projects
is there a way to do that within Inkscape? The ability to catalog and
then select is much easier than storing file by file and then trying to
retrieve them from those individual files as needed. The same is true
for storing them in one large file and then dragging and droping as
needed, it is not as elegant a solution as the DIA or VISIO methods.
Any ideas?

Doug

On 3/10/2013 7:11 AM, Dru wrote:
> Your question #223841 on Inkscape changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape/+question/223841
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Dru proposed the following answer:
> Well, Doug, the stencils that say you have to have Microsoft Visio -
> that's what you have to get in order to open them. You can try Microsoft
> Office if you have it, but .vss is a proprietary format and I don't
> think non-microsoft products will open it.
>
> Some CISCO stencils might be in .emf and .wmf fornats. If they are
> simple graphics Inkscape should have a fairly good chance of opening
> them, but dimensions might be a little out of whack.
>
> Your very best bet is to look for stencils in the PDF format if you
> can't find any in SVG. If you can find them in a .doc format you can
> save them from Openoffice or Word as a PDF and open them in Inkscape
> that way.
>
Thanks Dru. I know that Visio can read *.Svg files as well as the .Vss
files and use them interactively, so I was hoping that some one would
have ported the Cisco Stencils over as well. Those stencils are created
by Cisco for Visio or at least historically that was the case. DIA also
has Cisco Stencils, but not as many as Visio does.

Now about the second part of the questions I submitted, If I were to
create my own Cisco drawing or other drawings that I wanted to catalog
as a group and then be able to view and select them for future projects
is there a way to do that within InkScape? The ability to catalog and
then select is much easier than storing file by file and then trying to
retrieve them from those individual files as needed. The same is true
for storing them in one large file and then dragging and dropping as
needed, it is not as elegant a solution as the DIA or VISIO methods.
Any ideas?

Doug

Current stable version do not include a built-in feature you are looking for (a dialog which allows to choose different catalogs (stencils, symbol libraries), create&edit custom catalogs, and insert symbols from a chosen catalog into the current document).

The next major version (0.49) will have a new 'Symbol' dialog [1], which (so far) can handle SVG <symbol> objects, and (with limits) VISIO stencil files [2]. This is still work-in-progress, and will be documented once a new stable version has been released.

[1] see also:
    <https://plus.google.com/111969650498055377139/posts/Tz9FxGJENiy>
    <http://tavmjong.free.fr/blog/?p=700>
[2] <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/180322>