by Dale Farris, President, Golden Triangle PC Club
March 2001

NetZoom Symbols™ is a product designed for use with any of a variety of diagramming and presentation tools. NetZoom Symbols™ for SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus provides exceptional network equipment symbols in an easy to use format that will seamlessly integrate into your existing SmartDraw 5 program.

Note that you can read a separate review of SmartDraw.com's SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus program here.

These NetZoom Symbols are actually part of a fully developed line of add-on shapes and symbols from a very interesting software firm, Altima Technologies, Inc. In addition to SmartDraw 5, Altima Tech makes these sets of symbols for many other software programs, including Microsoft Visio, Microsoft PowerPoint/Office 2000, Actrix, LanFlow, IGrafx, RFFlow, StarOffice, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft FrontPage, and AutoCAD.

These comments will focus on how NetZoom Symbols work with SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus.

In addition to purchasing the symbols for these programs, Altima Tech also sells subscriptions that will allow you to always receive the ongoing updates and additions to these powerful add-ons.

NetZoom Symbols provide you with over 35,000 computer network equipment symbols from over 750 network equipment manufacturers that can be used in diagramming computer networks. With these added to SmartDraw 5 (or the other applications mentioned above), you can create detailed and accurate network designs, network documentation, presentations, and proposals.

Unique features such as advanced search, multiple views of each piece of equipment, new equipment shapes available through download, and a low cost, all combine to make NetZoom Symbols a very strong contender as the symbol library of choice for any information systems manager and network team.

As any network manager running any degree of complex computer network knows, trying to create a map of the network topology is one of the most difficult of tasks, unless they have the right software. While the many drawing and diagramming programs on the market now make it more easy to drag and drop various shapes or symbols to a drawing page, network administrators need this concept to go further, to allow them to depict the actual types and brands of the various nodes on the network that are calling their servers.

Now, with these NetZoom Symbols, network administrators can easily integrate these thousands of computer equipment symbols in their drawing program, such as SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus, thus further saving them time when needing to accurately present a map of the actual devices they are supporting.

These manufacturer-specific network equipment symbols will add to the already loaded collection of symbols in SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus, adding still further to the tremendous value that SmartDraw already presents. For users of SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus that need to create realistic drawings of the computer devices in a network, NetZoom Symbols will successfully support this goal.

In SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus, after you load the NetZoom Symbols, you will see a special built-in icon that provides access to these symbols and shapes, making them very easy to integrate in network diagrams.

The partnership with SmartDraw.com is exemplary how Altima Tech approaches the development and sale of their excellent products. Rather than having to invest in the development time and expense to create these thousands of diverse shapes in their drawing program, these vendors can instead partner with Altima Tech to provide these special computer equipment shapes as add-ons to their program. In the process, everyone wins in the end, especially computer network administrators.

The types of highly specialized shapes and symbols you receive in NetZoom Symbols include such devices as computers, workstations, servers, routers, and switches from such well-known high-tech firms as Cisco, Lucent, 3Com, and Hewlett-Packard. As you may already have considered, yes, these devices are constantly changing and expanding as these high tech manufacturers firms continue to re-invent themselves and their product line.

This is why once you invest in the initial set of NetZoom Symbols, I strongly urge you to also invest in the ongoing subscriptions, as this will allow you to keep your network map designs current with your newly added equipment.

Altima Tech is always working with various computer equipment manufacturers to get the rights to create symbols and shapes that represent these numerous devices. This assures that this important resource is always current for any computer information systems department in any company.

Operational Features

In SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus, you integrate these NetZoom Symbols in the program. Then, when you need to accurately present the actual devices on the network, you just drag and drop the shape of the device on to your drawing. The basic technique is to drag and drop a shape and connectors from the toolbar onto the drawing area.

The value of these NetZoom Symbols is their use to represent actual vendor devices that are connected to a network, and to be able to select from these added shapes from within SmartDraw when creating a network diagram.

Targeted Customers

NetZoom Symbols is a very highly specialized set of add-on shapes and symbols that require the user to first have installed one of the above mentioned drawing or other programs. These symbols are designed to be integrated into these programs, thus allowing the user to take advantage of the power of the drawing program, such as SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus, while being also able to accurately present actual vendor-specific devices on a diagram that represents a computer network.

Information systems managers now have the added power of these thousands of shapes at their disposal, when needing to create a realistic map of their network equipment. These symbols are a sure bet for any customer that already owns SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus, as well as the other supported programs these symbols will also work with.

About AltimaTech.com

Altima Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1995 as a computer software company, and is an Illinois corporation with headquarters in the Chicago area.

Altima Tech has pioneered revolutionary solutions in the areas of network diagramming, documentation, proposals, and presentations, and is recognized as a leading solution provider in these fields. Altima Tech's NetZoom 2000 products are used by networking professionals worldwide.

Altima Tech products are based on patent pending technology, and the following trademarks are owned by Altima Tech:  NetZoom 2000™, NetZoom Symbols™, NetZoom VNE Stencils™, iShapes™, and the Altima logo.

Altima Tech builds strong partnerships with and is always looking for new partners in the following fields: software applications, hardware manufacturers, resellers, and training centers.

Install and Setup

Installation and setup should proceed with little problems, but you will need to be sure you are purchasing the right set of symbols for your selected drawing program. The installation of NetZoom Symbols will vary, depending on which existing program you are wishing to integrate the symbols.

Price

$109.00 retail price
$  99.00 download price
$  99.00 one-year subscription
$179.00 two-year subscription

You can download a fully functional, 30-day trial version of these network design and drawing symbols at this SmartDraw web site. http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/network.asp?id=1117

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

SmartDraw 5 Professional Plus (or the other above mentioned applications)
Pentium or better PC
Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000 or later
Hard disk space will vary, depending on which symbols you install

As any user of any diagramming or drawing program knows, the faster the processor and the more RAM the better these and any other program will run. With these diagramming programs, you really do need to strive to run these on the fastest processor you can manage in your company. The coding and the processing required to make these user interfaces so easy to use results in a significant demand on system resources.

Contact

Altima Technologies, Inc.
Roosevelt Glen Corporate Center
799 Roosevelt Road, Building 6
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
630-790-0500
630-790-9995
info@altimatech.com
http://www.altimatech.com

You may also order these add-on shapes for SmartDraw from the SmartDraw.com company contact.

Sandra Lai
Marketing Coordinator
SmartDraw.com
10085 Carroll Canyon Road, Suite 220
San Diego, California 92131
858-549-0314, Ext. 111
800-501-0314
FAX 858-549-2830
sandyl@smartdraw.com
http://www.smartdraw.com