SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solution

By Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator Golden Triangle PC Club April 2006 General Overview SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solution is a drag and drop drawing program that is targeted at the healthcare industry. Drawing on the many features in the powerful, user-friendly SmartDraw 7 program, this program is a highly specialized edition of SmartDraw 7 that will directly appeal to anyone involved in healthcare management, education and training, and especially the healthcare quality improvement process. The flagship application, SmartDraw 7 Suite Edition, is aimed at users who need to create a diagram, flow chart, or other business drawing, but do not have the time to learn the features in more complex drawing programs on the market. SmartDraw 7 Suite Edition is SmartDraw.com's most complete and newest version of this neat program. Now, with SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solution, all these powerful tools have been explicitly created to benefit the healthcare industry. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution is designed to meet the far-ranging graphics needs of doctors, nurses, administrators, insurers, and other healthcare professionals. Specialized content (including Netter and Lippincott images) and tools for anatomy diagrams, patient education charts, healthcare facility floor plans, hospital staff schedules, and much more make creating any healthcare graphic easy for anyone in the field: no graphics experience or design skill required. For diagrams or other business-related drawings, SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solution is ideal for busy healthcare professionals needing to very quickly drag and drop selected shapes, symbols, or lines to a drawing area, and then format these shapes with text and other highlighting features that are also supported in the program. The program includes hundreds of add-on symbol libraries containing thousands of symbols that are directly tailored to healthcare and are suitable for software diagrams, network diagrams, floor plans, circuit diagrams, maps, organization charts, presentations, forms, and many other drawings. The symbols from the built-in libraries, as well as the ones you choose to create, can be easily dragged into drawings from a floating toolbar called a Library window. The basic edition of SmartDraw contains 1,000 symbols and examples, and the Suite contains over 60,000 symbols in various specialized collections. While each single edition is priced differently, the very reasonable price point for the Suite edition means you have little reason not to go ahead and start with the fully featured edition of this super program. It's as easy as drag-and-drop. If you know how to use a mouse, you know how to use SmartDraw. Making a flowchart, floor plan, organizational chart, Gantt chart, calendar, family tree, computer network diagram, or anything with SmartDraw takes three simple steps: 1. Click on the shape or symbol you want 2. Drag it wherever you want on the page 3. Repeat as necessary The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution - Easy Graphics Software for the Healthcare Industry Make healthcare diagrams, charts, and graphics in minutes Hundreds of professional templates give you a head start Perfect for nurses, doctors, administrators, educators, and anyone in the field Anatomy Diagrams Procedures Patient Education Disorders Process Flowcharts Forms Facility Plans Schedules For Administrators The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution delivers virtually unlimited benefits to healthcare administrators: departmental managers, coverage providers, hospital administrators, and everyone in between. In just a few minutes, you can—with your own hand!—make convincing, professional: Organizational charts Presentation Graphics Forms Staff Schedules Floor Plans Signage CDC Maps Project charts Calendars and much more! Compliance Process Flowcharts SmartDraw enables anyone to create full-color healthcare graphics in just a few minutes. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution contains more tools and higher-quality graphics than out-of-the-box graphics products, but it's not a complicated design software like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Photoshop—it's far easier to use than any of those. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution's ease-of-use is bolstered by pre-built templates and symbols (more than 38,000 symbols and 900 templates!) that you just drag and drop into place, and customize as you see fit. If you know how to use a mouse, you know how to use SmartDraw. There is no design experience or training or even artistic know-how required to create graphics with a professional finish. SmartDraw delivers the results you would expect from a professional designer without the costs of a professional designer. SmartDraw gives you a wide range of functions, features, and benefits that you won't find in any similar product. Using the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution will enable you to offer a higher level of service to your patients, and improve communication among your peers. You'll also enjoy: Instant productivity! Create the exact graphics you need in minutes. The ability to vastly improve Word documents or PowerPoint presentations with custom healthcare graphics. Buttons built in to SmartDraw make it as easy as one click. A graphics and drawing tool designed specifically for the exact needs of healthcare professionals, with symbols an templates arranged in libraries that address your exact needs (e.g., Anatomy & Physiology; Patient Education; Processes & Procedures; etc.). More than 38,000 symbols and more than 900 templates that you can use as is, or easily edit to meet your exact needs, plus the freedom to import custom logos, photos, and other graphics. More than 3,000 images from the Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Life Art series. 50 Netter images included (which would cost you more than $10,000 if bought separately!) The SmartDraw Image Plug-In—edit photos to fit your graphics, diagrams, and all your SmartDraw creations: full-color photos leave nothing to doubt. Step-by-step tutorials on the basics of drawing healthcare charts, diagrams, and much more with examples and samples you can use right away. Wizards that walk you through the steps of making perfect diagrams, charts, and other graphics. Built-in hints and tips, as well as an in-depth online help guide. Easy "drag-and-drop" drawing—no skill required—simply select the shapes you want and drop them into the layout. Easy text entry: shapes automatically expand as you type in the text you want. Automatic "snap to place" makes your shapes perfectly aligned with no hassle or "mouse aerobics." The ability to re-order symbols within libraries, or create custom symbol libraries. Doctors, Nurses, Dentists, and Other Providers The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution delivers virtually unlimited benefits to doctors, nurses, dentists, physical therapists, and most every healthcare provider. Patient education charts, therapy regimens and best practices, dental care procedures, and many more issues and events critical to healthcare providers and specialists are easier to explain to patients, clients, and other audiences with diagrams, charts, and other graphics made with the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution. In just a few minutes, you can—with your own hand!—make convincing, professional: Anatomy Diagrams - Teeth - Reproductive System Respiratory System - Anteriors Circulatory System - Interiors Nervous System - Joints Digestive System - And much, much more Disorder and Disease Charts - Heartburn - Refractive Defects Intracranial Tumor - Red Blood Cell Disorders Fracture Classifications - And much, much more Patient Education Charts and Handouts - Heart Healthy Diet - Effects of MS Dental Implant Process - Facts About Leukemia Stages of Birth - And much, much more Difference Between a Strain and a Sprain Presentation Graphics Immunization Schedules Genograms Signage Flowcharts Project charts Patient history charts Calendars SmartDraw enables anyone to create full-color healthcare graphics in just a few minutes. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution contains more tools and higher-quality graphics than out-of-the-box graphics products, but it's not a complicated design software like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Photoshop—it's far easier to use than any of those. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution's ease-of-use is bolstered by pre-built templates and symbols (more than 38,000 symbols and 900 templates!) that you just drag and drop into place, and customize as you see fit. If you know how to use a mouse, you know how to use SmartDraw. There is no design experience or training or even artistic know-how required to create graphics with a professional finish. SmartDraw delivers the results you would expect from a professional designer without the costs of a professional designer. Educators and Students In just a few minutes, you can—with your own hand!—make convincing, professional: Anatomy diagrams that explain in rich detail: - the teeth, - the respiratory system, - the circulatory system, - the nervous system, - the digestive system, - the reproductive system, - the joints, - and much, much more Disorder and disease charts the outline the basics of: - heartburn, - intracranial tumor, - fracture classifications, - refractive defects, - red blood cell disorders, - and much, much more Patient education charts and handouts that will help future healthcare providers create mutually beneficial relationships with their patients, by helping them explain: - a heart healthy diet, - the dental implant process, - the stages of birth, - the difference between a strain and a sprain, - the effects of MS, - the facts about leukemia, - and much, much more Classroom graphics Seating Charts Flowcharts Project charts Calendars SmartDraw enables anyone to create full-color healthcare graphics in just a few minutes. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution contains more tools and higher-quality graphics than out-of-the-box graphics products, but it's not a complicated design software like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Photoshop—it's far easier to use than any of those. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution's ease-of-use is bolstered by pre-built templates and symbols (more than 38,000 symbols and 900 templates!) that you just drag and drop into place, and customize as you see fit. If you know how to use a mouse, you know how to use SmartDraw. There is no design experience or training or even artistic know-how required to create graphics with a professional finish. SmartDraw delivers the results you would expect from a professional designer without the costs of a professional designer. Research and Development The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution delivers virtually unlimited benefits to healthcare and medical researchers, chemists, biologists, engineers, educators, and most everyone else in the field of healthcare research and product development. In just a few minutes, you can—with your own hand!—make convincing, professional: Drug development timetables and charts Microbiology diagrams and charts - In vitro fertilization - HIV - Mitosis - And more Molecular structure charts Network layouts Cause and effect diagrams Anatomy diagrams Disorder and disease charts Patient education charts Flowcharts Project charts Calendars Features and Specifications The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution helps you draw professional anatomical diagrams, facility layouts, patient education charts, calendars, project schedules, flowcharts, floor plans, and much more in just a few minutes. SmartDraw Healthcare Solution empowers healthcare professionals with the ability to communicate process, plans, and schedules graphically without relying on a graphic designer. It is the first tool of its kind, and it is as easy-to-use as possible, but with enough power to always deliver eye-catching, effective, expert results. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution has more than 40,000 professionally designed graphics—templates/layouts, symbols, clip art, and more. SmartDraw runs on your PC, and provides immediate benefits to both individual users and entire organizations. Ease of Use No design experience or even artistic skill is required to create convincing, professional graphics with the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution: the "talent" is built-in--there is no learning curve at all. The Right Tools for the Task Take advantage of hundreds of symbols and templates, and enjoy built-in functionality that makes drawing a breeze. Symbols and Templates Drawing Tools Lines Integration with Other Programs: SmartDraw Works with What You Know SmartDraw works hand-in-hand with Word, PowerPoint, and many of the other programs and products you may already know. Free Help, Free Support, Unlimited Downloads, and More SmartDraw provides FREE live support, a knowledge base, and many built-in aids—tips, tutorials, and more—to help you get the results you want. You also get lifetime downloads of your purchased product. A Custom Solution: Create Your Own Symbols, Templates, and Libraries Edit existing symbols and templates, or build your own, and create custom libraries, keeping the tools you use most often right where you need them. Automatic Alignment and Formatting: It's a SNAP with SmartDraw One of the hardest parts in creating graphics is getting all your lines and symbols properly aligned, but in SmartDraw getting perfect alignment is not only easy; it's automatic. Large-Format Printing SmartDraw empowers you with the ability to print anything from standard sizes to huge posters —even if you do not have a large-format printer. Colors, Borders, Textures, and Other Effects Change the color of the symbols, lines, and background within your drawings, and add a polished finish to your drawing with professionally designed color themes. The Image Plug-In The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution includes an Image Plug-In that enables you to view, insert, and edit digital images from right inside SmartDraw. Tables Easily format tables, and add graphics and photos to your table cells as well. Powerful Text Formatting Tools Type and easily format text inside, or next to, any symbol or shape. Unlimited Drawing Area and Linking and Layering Drawings SmartDraw has a virtually unlimited drawing area; even the most complex drawings can be created in SmartDraw. Automatic Connectors Automatic connectors come in many styles for many needs. These special lines keep shapes evenly spaced and arranged. Ease of Use No design experience or even artistic skill is required to create convincing, professional graphics with the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution: the "talent" is built-in—there is no learning curve at all. Work with a friendly, familiar interface (similar to Word). Simple drag-and-drop drawing lets you use any of the thousands of pre-defined shapes with one click, which will enable you to complete your project fast. Easily link shapes to other shapes and to borders: just drop shapes near each other and they link automatically. A built-in spellchecker addresses all spelling errors Work easily with other commonly used file formats The Right Tools for the Task SmartDraw empowers you with the tools you need to complete your project on time, and to do so with expert, effective results. In the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution, you can take advantage of more than 40,000 graphics—symbols, templates, and more—and enjoy functionality such as being able to edit photos from within SmartDraw. Symbols and Templates Thousands of ready-to-use symbols and templates, which you can adjust and adapt to your specific needs. More than 3,000 images from the Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Life Art series. 50 Netter images (which would cost you more than $10,000 if bought separately!). Find the symbols you need either by browsing or searching by name or keyword. Paste your own symbols and clip art directly into your SmartDraw drawing. Create your own graphics with the free form drawing tool. Have as many (or as few) symbol libraries and tools at your fingertips as you require; you can also "dock" up to 16 symbol libraries right in the drawing area. Size and move symbols with the mouse. Make selected symbols the same height, width, or both. Rotate and flip symbols, text and lines by any angle. Edit symbols to define where text will go (inside it, under it, etc.) and how it will resize when stretched or scaled. Combine symbols into groups and then un-group them again. Connect symbols with lines that stay connected, even when you move or resize them. Join lines and curves into new fill-able symbols. Change the color or fill texture of your symbols and apply color and shadow styles to entire drawings for a professional finish. Fill a symbol with a SmartDraw texture—or create your own from a metafile or bitmap. Drawing Tools Area Calculation: view the exact area of a shape as you draw it, with the measurements scaling up and down as you change the shape's size in any way. The dimensions can be viewed all the time or only when a shape is selected. Automatic Dimensioning: view the length of any line automatically, scaled to current ruler settings. These dimensions appear both as the line is being drawn and after it has been created. A line can show its dimensions all the time, only when selected, or not at all: it's up to the user. Anti-aliasing ensures smooth curves, lines, and text. AutoFill: Automatically populate table headers with numbers, months or days (as shown in the following graphic). AutoFill also enables you to automatically generate date ranges. For days-of-the-week and months, the sequence can begin at any value, and it repeats until the Number of Values is reached. For years and other series of numbers, a prefix and a suffix can be specified to create a string. For example, the parameters outlined in the graphic below result in Q1, 1998; Q2, 1998; Q3, 1998 and so on. Lines Choose from any line style: straight, arc, segmented, curved, double lines, filled lines, or create your own. Connect lines to create whatever shapes you choose. Line hops: 2-D drawings and charts have typically posed a problem for viewers when two lines intersect, but no more. The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution employs line hops that make one line simply and automatically "hop" over the other. Lines do not intersect unless you want them to. Draw dotted, dashed, and filled lines and borders as thick as you want. Size and move lines with the mouse. Lines and curves automatically change shape to maintain connections between shapes. Change the shape of lines with a simple menu command. Choose from 46 different arrowhead styles, including circles, crows feet, diamonds, and other styles. You can even create your own custom arrowhead. Connect lines across pages in multi-page drawings. Attach text to lines. Integration with Other Programs: SmartDraw Works with What You Know A fundamental benefit of the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution is that it works hand-in-hand with Microsoft Office and many of the other programs and products you may already know. The major commands and functions you are accustomed to using in programs such as Word, Excel®, and PowerPoint® also work in virtually the same way in SmartDraw: copy and paste, drag and drop, and more. Moving a SmartDraw trial graphic or any drawing into Office applications is as simple as copy and paste—there's no complicated file exporting or document reformatting necessary. And the same goes for dropping Office elements, such as a table or fancy text, into SmartDraw: just copy and paste. There are many other ways in which SmartDraw works well with the tools you use every day. SmartDraw graphics become "live" in Office and vice-versa: just double-click on any object to change it. The changes you make are updated automatically. MS Office users can add MS clipart, graphics, charts, and equations directly from the SmartDraw toolbar, or choose from SmartDraw's pre-designed galleries of graphs, text-styles, and symbols. It's like having a dozen drawing tools rolled into one! Export and import images in popular graphics formats including, WMF, BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF, and many others. Save your drawings for the web as GIF, JPG, or HTML Easily convert drawings made in other software: - Convert Visio or FlowCharter files to a SmartDraw format: If you have diagrams or plans previously created in Visio or FlowCharter, the SmartDraw File Conversion Wizard can quickly convert all of them to SmartDraw format in a single operation! - Convert other file types, too: SmartDraw's File Conversion Wizard also works with other diagramming programs that follow standard Windows object linking and embedding conventions. Advanced Import/Export Filters: Share drawings with others in your office using Encapsulated Postscript (EPS), AutoCAD (DXF and DWG)*, Adobe Illustrator®, Acrobat®, CorelDraw®, and other popular formats! (* Test your files for compatibility with the trial version of SmartDraw. SmartDraw imports DWG to ACAD 13 and DXF to ACAD 14.) Email a drawing to others in a single click. Hyperlink symbols or text in your SmartDraw drawings to a web page, to another SmartDraw document, even to a Word document or program. Export your SmartDraw drawing as an HTML file with working hyperlinks. Free Help, Free Support, Unlimited Downloads, and More Help: Should you require a few pointers, a tip, or a guide to see you through, SmartDraw provides many different aids to help you develop your drawings - Wizards that walk you through each step in creating, for example, floor plans, flow charts, and org charts. - Built-in Hints to guide you as you create your drawings. - In-depth tutorials and helpful examples to both help you understand the "finished product" and to give you basic instruction. - ToolTips that automatically label buttons on the toolbar. - Extensive online help is available for every command. - An easy-to-read electronic user's guide is available free online or on your CD-ROM. SmartDraw also provides FREE, LIVE, IN-HOUSE SUPPORT available to you for as long as you own SmartDraw. And with your purchase, you can enjoy a lifetime of downloads: no more install discs (unless you want them). And no worries should you experience a power outage during download-you can simply download SmartDraw again. A Custom Solution: Create Your Own Symbols, Templates, and Libraries With SmartDraw, you can edit existing symbols and templates, or build your own. You can also create custom libraries, keeping the tools you use most often right where you need them. Create your own shapes and lines easily with SmartDraw's FreeForm drawing tool—it's like a digital pencil! Draw whatever shapes you want, fill them with color, apply borders and textures, and make them as unique as you need them to be. This tool's power is similar to that found in high-end solutions, but its usability is unique to SmartDraw. Create your own libraries from our wide array of symbols and shapes—put what you use most in one convenient location. Change the sorting order of symbols in any given library. Dock the symbol libraries you're using right on your screen, or conveniently stack them as your needs dictate. You can also dock a symbol library on the toolbar. Have up to 16 symbol libraries open at the same time. Edit existing symbols to define where text will go (inside it, under it, etc.), where connections can be made to its borders, and how it will resize when stretched or scaled. Automatic Alignment and Formatting: It's a SNAP with SmartDraw One of the hardest parts in creating professional graphics is getting all your lines and symbols properly aligned, but in SmartDraw getting perfect alignment is not only easy; it's automatic. You don't even have to know how to draw a straight line, nor do you need to employ a painstakingly nimble mouse technique (if you've ever tried to make a great-looking graphic in PowerPoint, you know how time consuming it can be): SmartDraw does it all for you. Automatic alignment for neat, crisp drawings. Use snap-to-grid to automatically align the edges of symbols with the tick marks on the ruler. SmartDraw 7 also includes improved snapping functionality, with the ability to choose whether to snap to the top-left of a grid box or to the center. Use the Space Evenly feature to automatically place symbols the same distance apart. Align symbols to each other with a single click. Align shapes to each other with a single click Border anchoring (e.g., have your windows anchor to your walls automatically, among other functions). Define ruler scale and units, and choose whether to show or hide rulers. Adjust the front-to-back order for shapes and lines. Decide whether you want to show or hide the background grid. Adjust the front-to-back order for shapes and lines. Combine symbols into groups and then un-group them again. Large-Format Printing Print anything from standard sizes to huge posters. And you can print high-resolution, poster-size graphics even if you don't have a large-format printer because SmartDraw.com has partnerships currently in place with both Sir Speedy and AlphaGraphics. You select a local outlet directly through the SmartDraw Healthcare Solution's print dialog: it couldn't be easier! Print to scale and enjoy options to: - scale your drawing by a percentage - specify the scale in printed inches per drawing ruler-inch, or - fit the drawing to a fixed number of pages. Set scaling to a minimum of 1% and a maximum of 1000%. Colors, Borders, Textures, and Other Effects Change the color of the symbols, lines, and backgrounds within your drawings. Save time by capturing the style from any object in your drawing and applying it to others with one mouse-click via a format painter. Apply pre-defined color and shadow styles to your entire drawing. Apply different colors, border styles, shadows, and fill patterns to shapes and lines, including 3-D shadow effects. Enrich your shapes with sophisticated gradient fills. Create and store your own custom gradients. Add textures—such as tile, brick, etc.—to both shapes and filled borders with an easy-to-use textures dialog box. Define and store your own styles The SmartDraw Image Plug-In The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution includes the Image Plug-In that enables you to view, insert, and edit digital images from right inside SmartDraw. The SmartDraw Image Plug-In is the only imaging application fully integrated with SmartDraw. Transform, enhance, and personalize your graphics by using the faces, places, and things actually involved in the case you're communicating. Tables You can choose from a list of pre-formatted tables, specifying the number of rows and columns. You can even choose to automatically label columns with numbers, or days of the week, or according to whatever your needs may be—SmartDraw can even automatically generate date ranges! And don't worry about picking the perfect format: you can always change it later. Add symbols and photos to table cells. Anchor bars and symbols to tables. Specify border and background colors for each cell or the whole table. Join and split cells to create complex tables. Lock objects to various cells. Insert bitmaps in cells, and scale and crop as necessary. Lock graphics to cells so they don't move as you reformat the table. Powerful Text Formatting Tools Type and easily format text inside, or next to, any symbol or shape. Type text inside symbols or use text to label symbols Automatically check spelling as you type, and add words to your custom dictionary. Avoid embarrassing mistakes with this sophisticated real-time spelling checker that runs in the background and offers right-click suggestions and user-defined dictionaries, just like Microsoft Word. Symbols grow automatically to accommodate more text (or text shrinks to fit, depending on your choice). Words wrap automatically within symbols. Insert popular symbols from a Word-like dialog. Justify text left, right, centered, or flush, for individual paragraphs. Rotate text by any angle. Format bulleted text automatically. Hyperlink your text to other drawings, documents, web pages, or even programs. Unlimited Drawing Area and Linking and Layering Drawings SmartDraw 7 has an unlimited drawing: why impose limits if we don't have to? As your drawing expands, so does the drawing area. SmartDraw automatically resizes the drawing area to accommodate you. Simplify your more complex drawings with layers. Assign related types of shapes and lines to different layers that can be shown and hidden independently. Move between layers quickly and easily with layer tabs in the program window. Automatically tile large drawings across multiple printed pages or scale large drawings onto a single page. Link a symbol in one drawing to another drawing (or document) to create drawing hierarchies. View and edit drawings scaled to fit the window, fit-to-page, 50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200% or custom scale. Zoom into the nooks and crannies of your drawings via: right-click (in) and left-click (out). You can zoom to 1000% of your drawing size, meaning every detail, no matter how minute, can be dutifully addressed. Center the whole drawing on one or more pages. Automatic Connectors Automatic connectors work wonders when making organizational charts, and come in many styles for many needs. These connectors keep shapes evenly spaced and arranged without you having to do so manually. Drop shapes on connectors to automatically format charts. Change the shape of a connector arrangement with one simple menu command: Rearrange shapes attached to a connector with simple drag and drop. Join connectors to other connectors to create complex charts. Targeted Customers With their lineup of editions of SmartDraw, SmartDraw.com is aiming at the business, manufacturing, and now the healthcare and legal market with a focus on the non-graphics professional needing to create flowcharts, diagrams, and other drawings, while having little time to learn the program. While on the surface, SmartDraw 7 may seem at first to be very similar to Microsoft Visio or Micrografx Flowcharter, I found SmartDraw 7 easier to get up and running than when I first learned these other two drawing programs. With this specialized edition for the healthcare industry, SmartDraw now provides just the tool needed to create smart diagrams that relate to this industry. As you can see from the above listed impressive array of powerful features, this Healthcare Solutions edition of SmartDraw is a definite must for anyone working in the healthcare industry with any of the listed responsibilities or functions. In addition to this important Healthcare Solutions edition, SmartDraw also has an equally impressive edition tailored to the legal industry, SmartDraw Legal Solutions. In companies running at maximum operational efficiency, redundant staff is a thing of the past, and the harried pace of today's workplace means staff have very little "down" time that can be devoted to learning how to use any software program. These companies that also need a quality software tool that will support their internal quality improvement efforts can feel comfortable investing in SmartDraw 7 to accompany their ongoing quality commitment.  Stacking Up to Visio With the basic operations so similar to Microsoft Visio, mainly the similar approach to being able to drag and drop a symbol onto a drawing area, users may wonder how these two programs differ. I've used Visio for many years, and think that the SmartDraw interface tends to be less "busy," and less threatening to brand new users. Also, SmartDraw's user interface will likely seem more intuitive to new users, and easier to get started creating their diagram. In addition, SmartDraw 7 will allow users to convert their Visio files to SmartDraw format. The File Conversion Wizard in SmartDraw 7 can convert entire folders of Visio files into SmartDraw format in one easy operation. This file conversion process also works with Micrografx FlowCharter files, AllCLEAR files, and most other flowcharting programs. Visio supports users who want to program their drawing or their shapes, while SmartDraw does not. However, I think new users of SmartDraw will probably find it easier than Visio to learn, although both do offer many similarly powerful features that are so well designed in SmartDraw. With SmartDraw 7, the emphasis is on the majority of users who do not want to be burdened by unnecessary complexity. They prefer to just draw professional-looking diagrams quickly and easily, and they will find just what they need in this super, powerful program that hides the complexity, while making it very easy to use. Users ranging from novice to technical expert will undoubtedly find SmartDraw 7 very attractive. In SmartDraw, you can create very complex diagrams, as you can in Visio, such as complex circuitry diagrams, floor plans, and even mechanical engineering schematics, all using the built-in symbols that either come with the program or that can be later added. I found creating these in SmartDraw to be a bit easier, than in Visio, and also found creating business forms to be less tedious in SmartDraw. Also, Visio cannot compete with the extensive array of specialized functions that are exclusively included in SmartDraw Healthcare Solutions. I also am very impressed with the yeoman effort by SmartDraw to constantly offer new free symbols access via their Web site. You will not find this kind of attention to users from Visio support. I suggest any healthcare company that has yet to standardize on a drawing program strongly consider SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solutions as their charting and diagramming program of choice. System Requirements Pentium II processor or faster Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP 128MB RAM 100MB - 2.5GB free hard disk space 800 x 600 resolution and 16 million colors 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. Install and Setup Installation and setup should proceed with little problems. On machines that already have SmartDraw 7 installed, when you install SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solutions you will end up with one SmartDraw program. Installing the Healthcare Solutions program results in the overwriting of the existing SmartDraw program with Healthcare Solutions. I assume that the same thing would happen if you were installing the specialized SmartDraw Legal Solutions program on the machine. Presumably the company has chosen this option to prevent unnecessary duplication of templates and symbols on one machine, but I would have preferred to have been informed by supplemental documentation. This information was not provided with the software, nor were there any messages during the installation routine offering me a choice of overwriting one program with another, or to maybe add the program. I was interested in having both programs operating separately from each other on my machine, but instead the Healthcare Solutions became the sole SmartDraw 7 program on my machine. While this does make sense from a marketing perspective, meaning that the company is trying to sell their super SmartDraw program through this specialized Healthcare Solutions approach, this does mean that existing customers who already run SmartDraw on a machine and who are also interested in this Healthcare Solutions edition of SmartDraw will need to decide on another machine to install the Healthcare Solutions IF they wish to also continue running the flagship SmartDraw program. Obviously, customers in the healthcare care industry who do not yet own a version of SmartDraw will most definitely benefit from running this specialized edition of SmartDraw that has been especially created to suit their special needs. Price $449.00 SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solutions $  12.95 SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solutions CD At the time of this writing, SmartDraw was offering a special prices of $297 for SmartDraw 7 Healthcare Solutions. About SmartDraw.com SmartDraw.com is the Internet's #1 provider of business graphics software. Profitable since its founding in 1994, the company attributes its success to one fundamental design principle: Keep it simple. SmartDraw.com offers several products to boost business productivity: the flagship SmartDraw program is available in six editions, each targeting a specific industry and drawing type. They include the Flowchart Edition, Org Chart Edition, Floor Plan Edition, Technical Edition, Gantt Chart & Calendar Edition, and the SmartDraw Suite Edition. SmartDraw.com also publishes FotoFinish for editing, designing, and printing digital photo projects; and VisualScript XML for visually developing XML. Recognized as the Best From the very beginning, SmartDraw.com and its products have been recognized as "best in class," and the awards and acclaim just keep rolling in. SmartDraw.com and the SmartDraw product line have been awarded: Technology Fast 50, 2004, Deloitte & Touche San Diego's Fast Growing Companies, 2004, San Diego Business Journal People's Choice Award, 2003 SIAF Technology Fast 50, 2003, Deloitte & Touche Inc 500 Award, 2002, Inc Magazine Best Business Program, 2002 SIAF People's Choice Award, 2001 SIAF/CNET Smart Choice Award, 2001, Smart Computing Magazine Best Business Program, 2000, PC Magazine / SIAF Best Business Program, 1997, SIAF Best Business Program, 1996, PC Magazine / SIAF Best Graphics Program, 1995, SIAF All customers enjoy 24-hour access to their own private, on-line accounts, where they can manage their invoices, share files with colleagues, and download software (including free updates and add-ons). Their software products are so easy to use that they barely generate any support requests. That's why their expert, in-house tech support is always free, not only for licensed owners, but also for trial users. When you consider that over 300,000 new users install their free trial software each month, this is a phenomenal indicator of reliability. Recognized by Deloitte & Touche as one of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in Southern California, and by Inc magazine as one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in America, SmartDraw.com receives over two million web visitors per month, placing it in the top 0.1% of the most visited sites on the Internet. As an indicator of growing market share, SmartDraw.com already counts more than half of the Fortune 500 among its customers, and an attractive Enterprise licensing program is winning new corporate converts every day. SmartDraw.com stands out as a software firm that is thriving in today's challenging marketplace. Privately held by its founders and employees, with no debt and no outside funding, SmartDraw.com continues to enjoy a rocketing annual growth rate and a profitable bottom line. Contact SmartDraw.com 9909 Mira Mesa Blvd, Ste 300 San Diego, California 92313 858-225-3300 858-225-3390 www.smartdraw.com