Quick start

Vizspect connects the AI assistant you already use to Microsoft Visio, so you can produce patent figures using built-in USPTO drawing conventions from a plain-language description. This page takes you from a fresh install to your first finished figure.

Before you start

  • Windows 11 with Microsoft Visio, open, with a document in front of you.
  • A supported assistant: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cowork, ChatGPT Work, ChatGPT Codex, or another MCP client. See Connecting your AI assistant.
  • Vizspect installed and running: look for its icon in the system tray. See Install & setup.

1. Connect your assistant (one-time)

Vizspect registers itself with the assistants on your machine when it first runs; if an assistant is missing, add it from the tray’s Connect menu (or, for a URL-based client, point it at the local server). Once connected, your assistant gains a set of Visio tools; you never call them yourself, you just ask in plain language. Per-client steps are in Connecting your AI assistant.

2. Open your drawing

Vizspect attaches to the Visio you already have open; it never launches a hidden copy. Open Visio and the document you want to work in (a blank drawing is fine) before you ask for anything. The assistant always acts on the active document, so make sure the right file is the one in front of you.

3. Draw your first figure

Describe the figure in plain language. For example:

Draw FIG. 1: a block diagram of a portable air purifier. An air INTAKE feeds a FILTER, the filter feeds a FAN, and the fan feeds an OUTLET. Connect them left to right with arrows, and add reference numbers.

The assistant places the boxes, routes the connectors, assigns reference numbers (100, 102, 104, 106 for FIG. 1), and applies the house style automatically. Ask it to render the page so you can see the result without switching to Visio.

4. Refine it

Look at the render and give specific, one-at-a-time corrections: “move the outlet number below its box,” “make all four boxes the same width.” Vizspect re-reads the figure before every change, and destructive edits ask first, so your own hand-edits in Visio aren’t silently overwritten. Just take turns: Visio is single-threaded, so let one side finish before the other starts.

A few things worth knowing up front

These surprise people, and they’re all deliberate:

  • Text is Arial, all-caps; drawings are black-and-white line art. That’s the USPTO-friendly house style, applied to every shape. You can adjust the conventions (font, text case, margins, numbering) in Style settings; colour and fill aren’t options (figures are line art).
  • Margins are enforced. A placement that would fall outside the drawing area (37 CFR 1.84) is refused, with the nearest legal spot suggested instead.
  • Reference numbers follow a scheme: figure-based and stepped by two (FIG. 2 → 200, 202, …), with letter suffixes for repeated parts (130A, 130B, 130C). The assistant handles this; you can also specify numbers.
  • You stay in control. Deleting is guarded (it confirms the shape first, and a burst of deletions auto-saves a backup page), and every change is undoable in Visio.

The single biggest thing you can do for quality is learn how to ask well; see Prompting for quality.