By Bill Cohen-Kiraly

I’m not sure what choices Mac users have for charting and graphing but on the PC, as in so many areas in the PC world, this niche is controlled by the Borg. Microsoft has claimed the business standard for charting with Microsoft Visio, a software title which does for charting what MS Word does for word processing–that is, makes it way harder than it needs to be.

When I started at the Clinic, I had to brainstorm the new site for our division and rather than use Visio, I went back to the software I had been using for years and loved dearly. Oh I tried using Visio, but within five or ten minutes at each attempt, I was swearing at it--loudly. Things I take for granted in SmartDraw, connected shapes that move together, automatic formating of logic trees, multiple and controllable object formatting, all of these and more are either not in the Borg standard or are horribly unitutive and complex to accomplish in Visio.

Rather than fight, I switched back to SmartDraw, buying my own additional copy rather than using the Clinic supplied Visio. In fact, I almost convinced my boss to purchase copies for our department but we are a Microsoft shop and it wasn’t the standard. Finally this year, another person, far more important than me, also asked that we get this software and my wish was granted and I could use it without hiding.

However, when he bought it, he bought the newest version, SmartDraw 2008 and as much as I liked the older version, I absolutely love this new version. They took a great product and made it spectacular. In the new version, it is far more easy to get to the controls you want (once you find out where they got moved to) and even more chart types, object types and line and fill and shadow options are available. Only a few days experience with 2008 made me go back and upgrade my personal versions as well.

So what does SmartDraw do? In a nutshell, it is both a project design software and a graphics software. In my programming world, before we even start builing an application, we graphically document the database, hardware and logic flow as part of the design and approval process. If build a website, we create a web site map visually documenting the flow of pages. When building these applications, we may need to create graphic representations of concepts or data in charts and graphs to display in documents, on the web or in our applications. I have even found it suitable for creating quick and dirty logos and small drawings for web and application display.

This is a program designed for both business users and for people with some graphic skills to build attractive graphs and charts easily and quickly. The list of chart types it makes goes into the hundreds. I can’t find a total count but among the charting types build in are: Flowcharts (in several different common formats), Mind Maps, Gantt Charts, Timelines, Org Charts, Floor Plans, Maps, Scheduling Calendars, Forms, Bar Graphs and Pie Charts, Logical Data Flow Charts, Decision Trees, Network and Hardware Design, Web Site Maps and on and on and on.

What makes it so easy to use is the “Smart” part of the name. If you are drawing an org chart and need to add a sibling or descendant box, drag your box over and a new connector is created automatically and the existing boxes are moved to make range for their new brother. Grab the main item and the whole tree moves with you. Grab a control point and everything can be respaced to your liking. Apply color and formatting to everything on the page or to individual items. Choose from many different line, fill, arrow and connector types. Create your own symbol libraries. Easily add text connected to diagram objects which moves and formats with the parent object. It is hard to name all the little touches they have added to make this program work seamlessly and easily. Try the trial version if you really want to see it in action.

Another major benefit is extensive help and samples on how to use various kinds of charts. Even if you don’t get their software, you can benefit from visiting their online encyclopedia of charts at http://www.smartdraw.com/encyclopedia/which gives you explanation of, examples of and tips and tricks for hundreds of kinds of charts and their various flavors.

For all of these, you can start with a blank template or choose between multiple sample files. SmartDraw provides thousands of symbol libraries of all the major charting styles as well as a pretty good collection of useful symbols and business style clipart. I’ve timed it. Several charts which took me 3 and 4 hours in Visio which hardly supplies any more drawing automation that Illustrator and far less than CorelDRAW!, took me under a half hour in SmartDraw.

This software works very well with the MS office suite, copying and pasting as OLE objects directly into Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher as well as exporting to many common raster and vector formats including EPS, AI, TIFF, JPG and GIF (and many more).

Over the years, I’ve played with a lot of different charting and graphing programs and SmartDraw is far and away the easiest, most intuitive, most flexible and most efficent of any I’ve used. If you have a need for this software and have a Windows machine to run it on, by all means check out the trial version and extensive online documentation at http://www.smartdraw.com.

Some additional samples: