Smartdraw 2010: A dead body in the dining room

Diagrams - failed

Sometimes I put in my blog also programs that I myself have been working longer happy. Although these are mostly freeware tools, but in between there must surely helps to be a bigger commercial package: SmartDraw is one of the "good old acquaintances" on the Internet, a software for chart creation, which has been many years under his belt. For example, I had almost 10 years ago the "male outfit finder ' so drawn. And just because the new version was released in 2010 are worth, perhaps a few words.
First: Unlike his opponent of Microsoft, Visio , which is focused on moving more in IT-/Technik-Bereich to Visio is clearly broad: from the usual charts and flow charts of timelines and family trees to brochures and leaflets enough of the original pool . You want to create a sketch of a closet? No problem - the template is available. You want to structure food shelves? Available. You want to get a killer on the trail? All areas of a residential building, including fingerprints and bullet casings icons can drag and drop them into the sketches. Okay, there are also templates for brochures and other print projects there - that's what you should continue to prefer to leave a desktop publishing program - a chart-signer is now time not a word processor.
Impressively, however, all structural plans are gone because Smartdraw is not only simple symbol libraries available - it is the individual parts also provide you with "intelligence": the case of complex projects know each item as it has to behave in this particular diagram, where dock it must, if by "ENTER", a new row or column header should be generated if a timeline is in relation to years or months, and ... and ... and ... everything can be fixed via keystroke shortcuts do, you grab that does not need a mouse .

A good impression of SmartDraw 9 can be obtained by the following photo series:

The great strengths of the program are the numerous templates and comprehensive symbol libraries, there is not much to be desired. Similarly, SmartDraw is in its core areas - diagrams, organizational charts, structure charts, etc. - is clearly in the lead group. Some has to do without it but if it goes into the field of 3D - here is one of Microsoft's SmartArt feature now spoiled - so beautiful that SmartDraw get in most cases not go, but it's bearable. The "Spice" is really unnecessary as the basic (2D) styles are really clean and well thought through.

There remains the question of the price - moving to a home with $ 197 while in the upper regions - but because of the current euro exchange rate may reduce the price threshold. For students and educational institutions, it should also give discounts - because it might then be worth considering.

In any case, it is worth a test. The demo version is - except for the timeout period of 7 days - full, it even has access to all online templates.

Oh yes: for the Visio 2010 version of the user holds a very special way, handy new feature: a 1: 1 Import Filter for Visio files.

Homepage of SmartDraw

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