I’ve been using Visio since 1997 and I never thought about looking for free templates and downloads on the Web until Paul, an IT manager, mentioned he was looking for Visio stencils for hardware. Nick Finck has IA stencils available for Visio Professional 2003. MVPS.org lists Visio download sites.

It’s a great tool for software architecture and relationship modeling, Web design architecture and flows (Here are two articles from Boxes and Arrows on using Visio for wireframes.), hardware design, business process flows and many others. Here’s the official Visio site at Microsoft, downloads, and KB articles.

Here are more you can download — be sure to check the Visio version as some work with specific versions:

• UML 2.0

• Cisco
• Dell
• Citrix MetaFrame
• Wireframes from urlgreyhot
• Business Process Modeling Notation
• Prototyping
• Visio Cafe has many company product stencils as well as for Sarbanes-Oxley stuff.

If you need stencils or templates for a product not listed here, just use Google and enter “visio stencils [product name].” It may not exist and in this case, use generic stencils. You can also roll your own…

• ZDNetAsia

• TechRepublic
• search for shapes and save as a custom stencil

[Originally appeared in meryl's notes]