Updated Meraki Visio Stencils

[nickydd9]

Is Cisco Meraki going to come out with updated Visio Stencils for newer hardware that has come out, for example the MX75?

It seems they haven't been updated since some time in 2019.

[DarrenOC]

@MeredithW - anyone in Meraki who can comment here?

[MerakiDave]

@nickydd9 @DarrenOC  I think the official answer on Visio Stencils is https://meraki.cisco.com/product-collateral/cisco-meraki-visio-stencils/ but like with most vendors they tend to range from out-of-date to painfully out-of-date.  My colleagues and I have made this known internally, not sure what the mechanism is for keeping the stencils up to date, I will look into it again and make some noise. 

But I'd like to try to help regardless. There’s generally enough in the .vss to make useful drawings but you might need to leverage the MR52 stencil to represent the MR56 for example and update the properties (if object properties matter or even get used).  

We do have the Meraki Collateral Library and you can search it with the keyword "photograph" here https://meraki.cisco.com/collateral/?sortby=by-name&keyword=photograph which has more current product images if that's helpful in some way. 

Also, I know that some customers (rather than waiting for Visio stencil updates) have actually used the images from our Meraki sizing tool to create their own Visio stencils in a much easier way than manually creating them. Check out the images here for example, click into an MS390-48UX2 and one of the uplink modules if desired and there's a pretty good and accurate depiction of the switch, in case this might help. https://merakisizing.com/#/ms

The new MX75/85/95/105 models don't have photographs posted quite yet but they did already make it into the sizing tool. 

[nickydd9]

Thanks @MerakiDave  for the detailed reply. Much of what you describe are the workarounds that I have been using while patiently  / hopefully awaiting a new updated official stencil set.

I have not thought to use the images from the sizing tool for this purpose, that's creative.

I personally have just been grabbing images off the web, cropping them out in GIMP, and then exporting them from there and importing to Visio and creating new master shapes from these freshly cropped images. This is all fine and dandy and I will likely continue to do this, but just was maybe hoping there was a *cough* roadmap *cough* for a new stencil set.

[MarcMTB]

It would really be nice if creating and updating these templates was part of the product release cycle instead of a mere afterthought.

"Oh look, the new WAPs are out, ah nice! The stencils are available when you can buy the device, so you can make an accurate diagram first time around!"  <---how it should happen...it should just be part of the documentation creation before launch.

[MarkAtLumen]

Still no update?

[CarolineS]

Hi @MarkAtLumen -

Apologies, I should have posted on this thread when these came out - a fantastic Merakian, Zak, has taken this on as side project. I'm not sure if he has created the MX75 specifically, but take a look - https://community.meraki.com/t5/Dashboard-Administration/Meraki-SVGs-Visio-LucidChart-Stencils/m-p/2...

Cheers!