

Stencils are clip art files that serve as elements, such as icons or buttons, for OmniGraffle documents. Is there any explanation for why the VSX file is so much larger? Stencils are OmniGraffle application resources. Re-saving it as a VSS brought the file size down quite a bit, but it weighs in at 4.5MB. When I created a VSX stencil with these icons, the resulting file was 14.5MB! The current batch of icons I've created includes 22 separate icons, and in SVG form, the biggest of them is 126KB, with most of them coming in at around 45-75KB for a total of 1.1MB for the lot. Now on to my current file-size weirdness woes.

I've found that doing what I can to keep shapes simple, and colors and gradients fairly basic that importation is generally trouble free. This results in a higher point count, but better fidelity of the graphic, especially if the end user has to scale it a significant amount. One thing I've found is that Visio doesn't handle the scaling of strokes/outlines very well, so I've taken to converting all lines to outlines. The importation of SVG files into Visio isn't always a smooth operation, either, as Visio's support for SVG isn't 100%. The conversion to SVG from Illustrator isn't always perfect, especially if you use some of the more advanced features of the program like Gradient Mesh or Image Trace. Paul: I've been toying with your Super Utilities Add On, and have to say I'm fairly impressed with everything that it can do.Īs to file sizes, I think it's a combination of a couple of things. Any advice on this would be incredibly helpful! Also, there is often a lag when dragging and dropping the icons from the Stencil to a Visio drawing.įWIW, I've been deliberately keeping the artwork I'm building in Illustrator very simple I don't use any effects, and keep my use of gradients to an absolute minimum.

Is there anything I can do to optimize the size of the Stencil files? It strikes me as completely ridiculous that SVG files that are tiny should result in a Stencil file that is more than a couple of MB in size.
OMNIGRAFFLE IMPORT STENCILS MAC
To complicate things further, we've got several Mac users who use OmniGraffle to view Visio files, so I saved the Stencils out as VSX files, as that is compatible with both Visio and OmniGraffle. Yet when I save out the Visio Stencils, the Stencil files end up being enormous, often times over 10MB, and in one case, around 60MB for a Stencil that had a grand total of 12 icons! Most of my SVG files are very small, almost all of them are less than 100kb in size. So far this has worked pretty well, but I have run into a few problems, the most annoying of which is this: Save imported graphics to a Visio Stencil. Rapid-prototyping Quickly create beautiful wireframes to explore ideas accurately. I've been tasked with creating a collection of custom graphics that can be used in Visio 2007.Įxpand appearance and convert type to outlines. OmniGraffle is purpose-built for explaining complicated ideas in a beautiful, precise way.
