SmartDraw Visual Processor

By Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator
Golden Triangle PC Club
November 2011

General Overview

SmartDraw VP 2012 is a drag and drop drawing program that has been nicely updated, including the continued compatibility with Windows 7, as well as a continued ability to integrate well with Office 2010. SmartDraw VP 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 VP 2012 is SmartDraw.com's most complete and newest version of this neat program.

With this new version VP, SmartDraw updates their already highly successful SmartDraw. Compared to previous versions of SmartDraw, SmartDraw VP can do all the same tasks and more. All drawing tools and commands are more accessible and easier to find and use. The interface will look familiar to readers who have been following the development of Microsoft's Office and the "ribbon" concept that now defines Office.

Just as the word processor makes it possible for anyone to create beautifully formatted written documentation, the "Visual Processor" makes it possible for anyone to create presentation-quality visuals just as easily. Before the visual processor, visuals had to be created manually with complex graphics software. Even for experts, producing a visual like a flowchart was time consuming and the results were often not presentation-quality.

SmartDraw automates the creation of visuals to such a degree that anyone can do it, and get great results in minutes. With SmartDraw anyone can create great looking business graphics in minutes, not hours. SmartDraw anticipates your needs—giving you pre-drawn templates, automating design, and making it easy to turn your information into brilliant illustrations fast.

SmartDraw is the perfect graphics software for:

Flowcharts
Org Charts
Project Timelines
Gantt Charts
Marketing Charts
Bar Graphs & Pie Charts
Forms
Floor Plans
Scheduling Calendars

What is SmartDraw VP 2012 and How is it Different?

Completely Redesigned Project Management: Sleeker, Faster, and More Powerful

Faster and More Manageable Charts

Better Controls and an Updated Look Make Project Management a Breeze for Anyone

Save Time Assigning Tasks

New Assignment View Equals Built-In Instant Accountability

Save Time by Creating Custom Task Libraries

Announcing Information Hubs: A Powerful New Organization Tool

Communicate Complex Information Quicker and Easier

Faster and Fewer Meetings using Real-Time Capture

Built-In Instant Accountability

All New Automated Timelines

Automatic Formatting of Timelines

Automatic Positioning of Timelines

Make Better Looking Org Charts Even Faster

Save Time with One-Click Layout Controls

SmartDraw VP is the world’s first "Visual Processor." Just as a people use a word processor every day to create professionally-formatted written documents of any kind, people use a visual processor every day to create professionally-formatted visuals of any kind, including flowcharts, organization charts, mind maps, and project charts.

A visual processor is just as easy to use as a word processor. Anyone can use it. Drawing skill and graphic design experience are not required. You can even create a visual using just the keyboard!

SmartDraw is likely different than any software you have seen before, especially if you are used to traditional graphics software, such as Microsoft Visio. In fact, those who are expert in technical drawing software or have been using diagramming software for some time, are sometimes frustrated at first with SmartDraw. They want to see a blank page and palette of shapes and tools when they begin, since they are so used to that old paradigm.

However, SmartDraw is a product for an entirely different audience—the 95% (or higher) of business people who have never created a visual using any program. The overwhelming majority of Microsoft Office users fall into this category. Most people know that visuals are a powerful communications tool. Studies support this—it’s been found that using a visual is up to 6 times more effective than using words alone.

So why don’t more Office users create and use visuals? Why is nearly every PowerPoint presentation slide void of visuals, and filled with text bullets that fail to engage, and subsequently bore audiences instead of communicating key ideas and information? Because the existing products on the market, the traditional graphics software tools, are simply too difficult to use and require both drawing and formatting skills, as well as the knowledge of how best to conceptualize, design, and implement visuals to communicate more effectively.

SmartDraw VP is the result of years of customer research and usability studies, which consistently showed that most business computer users are unable to create a visual using the existing tools and blank page paradigm. The huge time investment, countless revisions, and unsatisfactory end result made the whole effort just not worth it. Given that communicating visually is far more effective than using words alone, we set a lofty goal for ourselves: to make visual communication as common as written.

To make this possible, we needed to give business users something completely different. Traditional drawing and graphics software were going to have to be replaced by something that did not start with a blank page, that had knowledge of the type of visual being created, and that had automatic formatting and built-in design to make it easy enough for anyone to use, for the results always to be professional, and for them to do it quickly enough to make it worth their time. This is why SmartDraw invented a whole new type of software, which is so different than traditional graphics and drawing alternatives, that it deserved a new name: the visual processor

Anyone Can Easy Create Visuals With SmartDraw

As a first-time SmartDraw user, you can create a professional-quality visual in minutes, because SmartDraw draws and formats the visual for you. Creating your visual is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Start by selecting the type of visual you want to create. Do this from the template browser. Because SmartDraw knows what you want to create, it formats the visual for you. You don’t need to know the formatting rules like you do when using manual drawing software.

2. Enter your information by clicking customized task buttons in the SmartPanel, or by typing text into a pre-constructed visual. Each type of visual that SmartDraw supports (more than 70 of them) has a SmartPanel on the left-hand side of the screen that provides you with commands specific to the type of graphic you are creating. Many of these commands have keyboard shortcuts. You can often create your visual without taking your hands off the keyboard!

3. SmartDraw does the rest, building the visual automatically using built-in rules and professional design themes. SmartDraw support more than 70 different kinds of business visual—each with its own rules built-in.

SmartDraw and Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is the standard tool used by hundreds of millions of businesspeople for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets and email. Almost all of these activities are text-only. Even PowerPoint is used primarily in text-only mode with slide after slide of bullets.

While Office includes some primitive drawing tools, they are not extensively used, because they are simplistic and require manual drawing, which most people find time-consuming and tedious. SmartDraw, with its comprehensive automatic drawing features, adds key functionality to every desktop-functionality that Office lacks.

In addition to the ability to easily incorporate visuals into Word, PowerPoint and Excel, SmartDraw adds the Six P’s to Office: 1. Project Management 2. Process Management 3. Presentation authoring 4. People Management 5. Planning and Strategy 6. Specifications

Features

Microsoft Office Interoperability
Express Charts
Instant Graphic Design
Automatic Business Graphics of All Kinds
Built-In Photo Editing
Better Maps With Live Data
Automatic Flowcharting
Image Charts

Smart Draw VP has many capabilities designed to improve the communications effectiveness of executives and managers.

These include:

Smarter Flowcharting for Documenting and Improving Operational Processes Flowcharts are built using simple commands rather than by manually drawing, arranging and connecting shapes on the page. Key to this automation is the SmartPanel which contains a set of single click task buttons for flowcharting. Simply click these commands or keystrokes to build your flowchart.

Lines are drawn automatically. Formatting is automatic: Shapes are evenly spaced and perfectly aligned.

Keyboard shortcuts to SmartPanel commands increase productivity even more, making it possible to build a flowchart without taking your fingers off of the keyboard. Smart Draw VP adds the ability to split a path into two or more branches, combining a decision tree with an ordinary flowchart. The first example below shows a shipping process documented using traditional diamond shaped decision symbols and a second shows the same process using split paths, making it easier to follow.

Smarter Mind Maps for Organizing Ideas and Projects
Like flowcharts, mind maps are built with simple commands in the SmartPanel. Smart Draw VP adds the automatic coloring of levels in the map and the ability to indent and outdent topics in the hierarchy. Mind maps can be exported as outlines to word processors and be converted into a project chart.

Project Management for Planning and Tracking Projects
In Smart Draw VP project charts have become real project management tools with more than six major improvements including:

• Dependency Make one task start when another ends. Change the end date of the first task and the start date of the second changes automatically.

• Groups of tasks Tasks can also be grouped hierarchically so that the length of the parent task reflects the length of all the child tasks.

• Milestones Add a milestone with a single click.

• Resources Assign resources to a task

• Automatic Chart Sizing
As tasks are added and removed, the chart grows and shrinks to accommodate the new date range.

• Definable Working Days Users now have the ability to define the work week as well as non-working holidays.

Smarter Organizational Charts for Managing People
Organization charts are also built with simple commands. With Smart Draw VP individual branches can be hidden and shown with a single click, making it easy to manage larger charts.

Smarter Timelines for Project Management and Legal Case Planning
Timelines are built with simple commands. Events are added and spaced automatically. The timeline expands and contracts automatically as events are added and removed.

Sticky Notes for Annotations to Any Graphic
In Smart Draw VP notes can be assigned to any shape and will later appear whenever you mouse over the shape (tooltip).

Smart Draw VP makes it easier for presenters to make their audience say “Yes!” The new presentation features make presentations more compelling and effective. With SmartDraw, users will close that sale, fund that project, or simply improve their image with clients and colleagues . Only SmartDraw has a special ribbon toolbar dedicated to its integration with PowerPoint.

Smarter PowerPoint Integration that grabs your audience’s attention
You know how it goes. You’re sitting through a presentation and the presenter is discussing the findings of numerous pieces of data that together form a conclusion. Since all of those pieces are displayed together on one slide, you lose focus and start to zone out. It’s a fact: when presenters both talk to and present one piece of data at a time, audiences focus in on just those steps and more fully understand the “big picture” once the whole has been revealed. Smart Draw VP has solved the presenters’ dilemma. One mouse click will transfer a SmartDraw graphic into a PowerPoint slide with built in animation.

Using animation to reveal information step by step with Smart Draw VP
Each click is a key feature for helping audiences fully comprehend what the presenter is trying to convey. SmartDraw applies these animation cues automatically and preserves them when you move your graphic into PowerPoint. The result is a more compelling and memorable presentation. SmartDraw is the only business graphics program with this level of integration with PowerPoint.

Atomatic Storyboarding for Planning Presentations
Great presentations start with careful planning. SmartDraw’s new presentation storyboards allow you to plan and craft the flow of your presentation visually. These presentation storyboards are built with simple commands, including the ability to indent and outdent topics in the hierarchy, drag shapes representing slides and bullets to any part of the chart, and the automatic coloring of levels.

Stunning New Effects to Wow Audiences
The new perspective effect takes any graphic and floats it in mid air to create an attention getting effect. Graphics can be printed this way directly or transferred into Word and PowerPoint.

Smarter Charts for More Effectively Communicating Data
SmartDraw opens up a world of chart making for those who don’t want to bother first entering data into an Excel spreadsheet and then turning it into a chart with very limited features and colors. With SmartDraw, charts and graphs can be built without having to create a spreadsheet first. Users can pick a chart and type their data directly into the bars, or simply drag them to represent the right values. New charts include area charts and 3D bar graphs. Smart Draw VP charts automatically animate when transferred to PowerPoint , so that their information can be presented in stages rather than all at once. The new gallery interface gives users the ability to change the appearance with one click.

Smarter Maps With Data Plotting for Communicating Regional Information
The new Live Map feature captures data from Google maps to incorporate roads, regions, counties, zip codes, countries and even satellite images from across the globe into your illustrations. With Smart Draw VP users can now plot data centered on a location, showing sales by region for example, making for an incredibly professional effect when presenting area related data.

For IT and Infrastructure Managers Smart Draw VP has many new features designed to save IT manager’s time.

Smarter Network Diagrams to Review and Communicate Network Design
Smart Draw VP allows you to build a network diagram automatically from an LDAP service or exported file. SmartDraw "draws for you," automatically aligning and spacing symbols.

Smarter Web Site Mapping for Web Design and Maintenance
With a single click Smart Draw VP will automatically and incrementally map any web site into a well organized and nicely formatted site map graphic instead of the useless “spaghetti” diagram that most web site mapping software produces. Duplicate links are automatically eliminated.

Web page Annotation for Web Design and Review
Smart Draw VP can capture the image of any web page and then makes it easy to annotate it.

Smarter Software Design Diagrams for Software Development
In Smart Draw VP UML and other software diagrams now use the same “Draw For You” technology as flowcharts.

Smarter Floor Plans for Facilities Management and Construction
Smart Draw VP introduces completely new floor plan and landscape functionality including industry standard dimension lines and much easier wall and perimeter design for a truly professional presentation. Floor plans can be quickly and easily composed using exact dimensions, snap on windows and doors, and easily customizable walls.

Automatic Flowcharting

Build flowcharts by clicking simple commands, rather than manually arranging and connecting shapes on the page. Lines are drawn automatically, and formatting is automatic with shapes evenly spaced and perfectly aligned.

Automatic Business Graphics of all Kinds

SmartDraw includes hundreds of specialized SmartTemplates to automate the creation of every type of diagram, including: organization charts, project charts, decision trees, cause-effect diagrams, genograms, and more.

Instant Graphic Design

A professionally-designed graphic theme, specifying colors, line and type style, is automatically applied to each graphic. Select and change the theme with a single click.

ImageCharts

Use pictures and images to display your information instead of standard bars, lines and circles. Create an ImageChart in seconds by dragging any image—even a photo—onto your chart, and watch your data come alive.

Live Maps

Live Maps capture live data from the Internet allowing you to incorporate roads, regions, counties, zip codes, countries and even satellite images from across the globe into their illustrations—all as separate, editable elements.

Integrated Photo Capability

Built-in photo-software functionality allows you to import images directly from your digital camera or other source, crop and scale, adjust color and brightness, and drop them into org charts or any other illustration.

Express Charting

Create charts and graphs without having to make a spreadsheet first. Simply pick a chart and type your data directly into the bars. You can even drag the bars to represent the right values.

Smart Draw VP Crosses the Graphics Gap

Smart Draw VP changes the face of graphics software with an all-new intuitive interface and revolutionary SmartTemplate technology. The new design for Smart Draw VP is the result of extensive user testing and many years of feedback from the millions of SmartDraw users. It is a breakthrough release that makes creating business graphics as easy as typing a letter with a word processor.

For example, to create an attractive and effective flowchart, users must know which shapes and symbols to use, what they mean, and how they fit together. They also need to apply good graphic design principles, and then be able to produce it. Most people don't even know where to start. To solve this problem, SmartDraw has developed hundreds of SmartTemplates for every type of business graphic. Each SmartTemplate loads a diagram specific SmartPanel command set and the associated SmartHelp step-by-step instructions.

With SmartDraw, any user is an instant expert on how to make a complex diagram. And with SmartDraw’s gallery of professionally designed styles, effects and themes, the user is an instant graphic artist as well! For example, open a “flowchart” SmartTemplate, and the correct symbols, settings, color schemes, SmartPanel and SmartHelp necessary to create the flowchart are displayed automatically.

SmartPanels—make complex tasks easy. Each SmartPanel contains single-click task buttons relevant to the diagram type being edited. SmartPanel buttons perform the most common tasks for a drawing type—even combining multiple steps into a single click. For example, the Flowchart SmartPanel has task buttons to Add Shapes, Add Text, Add Lines, Arrowheads, Line Hops, Help and more. SmartPanels enable users of any level of experience to complete a professional quality diagram as quickly and easily as possible.

SmartHelp is a dynamic HTML pane that presents task and diagram relevant help. SmartHelp has a familiar browser navigation scheme, simplified step-by-step instructions and provides access to online resources as well.

Creating a graphic with SmartDraw is a simple as 1 – 2 – 3. Users simply select a SmartTemplate to start, stamp additional symbols in place, and then choose for the professionally-designed color styles and design themes to polish off the drawing.

1. CHOOSE a Smart Template. There are hundreds of professionally designed SmartTemplates so it's easy to look like an expert!

2. DRAG shapes, lines, and symbols to where you need them. Choose from a library of over 20,000 standard symbols and shapes.

3. POLISH with themes, styles and text and you're done! Just save and print. Or, transfer into other programs with one click.

For diagrams or other business-related drawings, Smart Draw VP is ideal for busy 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 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. 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

SmartDraw works with what you know. All of your SmartDraw flowcharts and diagrams can be easily copied and pasted into the programs you use every day—Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more—adding a new level of visual understanding to your presentations and documents.

Also, SmartDraw does what other programs simply cannot do. Have you tried to make a flowchart or organizational chart in Word or PowerPoint, and found it to be too time-consuming and the results too boring? Have you found Visio too pricey or technical? That's why the company created SmartDraw, or, as many of their customers call it, the "missing piece" of office software.

Smart Draw VP is very easy to use and includes a built-in Hints guide to help you along as you create your first drawing. ToolTips automatically label buttons on the toolbar, and online help is available for all commands. The user guide is also available in PDF format on the program CD ROM disc.

The simple drag-and-drop interface lets you draw any of thousands of pre-defined shapes with one click, and the FreeForm tool allows you to create your own shapes and fill these in with color, apply borders, and insert text, as you would any standard shape.

Flow charts, block diagrams, signs and posters, decision trees, organizational charts, network diagrams, floor plans, process flow diagrams, schematics, Gantt charts, chemistry diagrams, time lines, office space plans, flyers, posters, brochures, banners, maps, and more are all ready for easy dragging onto the drawing board for your use.

You can email your drawings to others in a single click, and you can set up hyperlinks in drawings to link to other files on the Internet. Export SmartDraw drawings ad HTML files with working hyperlinks, and upload these to your free SmartDrawNet web site with one click. With the Free SmartDraw Viewer, anyone can now view and print SmartDraw drawings even if SmartDraw is not installed on their machine.

You can also create drawings up to 50 inches square, containing thousands of shapes and lines. Automatically tile large drawings across multiple printed pages, or scale these onto a single page. Link a shape 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. Connect shapes with lines that stay connected, even when you move or resize them, and size, move, rotate, and flip shapes, text and lines by any angle.

You can also create your own symbols and add these to any existing library, and you can also create your own libraries. Open up to 16 library windows at the same time, and edit existing symbols to define where text will go, where connections can be made to its borders, and how it will resize when it is stretched or scaled.

Several line styles are included, such as straight, arc, segmented, curved, and communication and digital style. You can change the shape of lines, draw dotted and dashed lines, and choose from 23 different arrowhead styles, including circles, crows feet, diamonds and others.

Automatically connect lines to each other and to any shape, and they stay connected. Connect lines across pages in multi-page drawings, and size and move lines with the mouse. Lines and curves automatically change shape to maintain connections between shapes, and you can attach text to lines. With automatic dimensioning, you can show the length of any line automatically, scaled to current ruler settings. FreeFrom lines can also be drawn, including right-angled lines with curved corners, smooth curved lines with arbitrary shapes, and more.

Shapes can be dropped on connectors to automatically format organization charts, family trees, fishbone diagrams, flowcharts, and network diagrams. You can change the shape of a connector with one simple menu command, and you can rearrange shapes attached to a connector with simple drag and drop. Join connectors to other connectors to create complex charts.

With table design, you can design business forms, time lines, and spreadsheets. Specify border and background colors for each cell or the whole table, and join and split cells to create complex tables.

The background color, border styles, shadows and fill patterns for shapes and lines can all be modified, and you can include 3D shadow effects. Sophisticated gradient fills are included in the Professional Plus edition, and you can apply pre-defined color and shadow styles to an entire drawing.

Type text inside any shape of symbol, and shapes grow automatically to accommodate more text, or text shrinks to fit, depending on your choice. Control the way the shape grows as you add text, and words wrap automatically within shapes. Change the font and color of characters, add superscripts and subscripts within the shape, insert popular symbols from a Word-like dialog, justify text left, right, centered, or flush for individual paragraphs.

Automatically type labels underneath symbols, and rotate text any angle. Format bulleted text automatically, and hyperlink your text to other drawings, documents, or web pages.

The automatic alignment and formatting features let you show or hide rulers, define the ruler scale and units, use snap-to-grid to automatically align the edges of shapes and lines with the tick marks on the ruler, and to show or hide the background grid.

Also, you can make selected objects the same height, width, or both, and use the Space Evenly feature to automatically place lines and shapes the same distance apart. Adjust the front-to-back order for shapes and lines, and in the Professional Plus version, you can simplify drawings using multiple layers. Assign related types of shapes and lines to different layers that can be shown and hidden independently. Finely adjust the size and position of shapes using the arrow keys to "nudge" them 1/100 of an inch at a time. Combine objects into groups, and then ungroup them, and center the whole drawing on one of more pages.

Powerful Features

Ease of Use Here's what makes SmartDraw easy to use:

Next generation, easy-to-use ribbon-style user interface (with optional traditional menu bar)

SmartTemplates with context-sensitive help - get the help you need, when you need it, automatically!

SmartPanel allows one-click access to six buttons specific to what you're drawing

Thousands of example drawings - which you may customize and make your own!

Over 20,000 shapes and symbols to simply click and drop into your drawing

Transfer your drawing to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect and Adobe PDF - with one simple click

Automatic text formatting as you type, with built-in spell check Automatic linking - just drop shapes near each other and they automatically line up and link!

Automatically create calendars, Gantt charts and timelines. Set a date range, SmartDraw does the rest!

Auto Flow automatically draws connecting lines between shapes

Org Chart Builder takes your properly formatted file and automatically builds the appropriate chart Imports and exports from all commonly used file formats

Symbols and Shapes

Over 20,000 shapes and symbols to simply click and drop into your drawing

Copy and paste your own symbols, icons, and clip art

Size and move symbols with the mouse

Automatically make selected symbols the same height, width, or both

Automatically align symbols, shapes, and lines

Automatically space symbols, shapes, and groups of symbols and shapes evenly

Rotate and flip symbols, lines, and text by any angle

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

Create your own fill textures from a metafile or bitmap

Apply colors and graphic effects to entire drawings for a professional finish

Drawing Tools

Auto Flow automatically inserts connecting lines between shapes. Just drag a symbol next to another symbol and a segmented line automatically and perfectly connects the two shapes

Area Calculation lets you see 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 lets you view the length of any line, scaled to current ruler settings, as it's being drawn or after it's been created

Anti-aliasing ensures smooth curves, lines, and text

The Drawing Area

Unlimited drawing area

The drawing area automatically resizes to fit your drawing

Simplify complex drawings with layers that can be shown, edited, 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, page, 50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 400% or custom scale

Show or hide ruler

Zoom into the nooks and crannies of your drawings - just right-click (in) and left-click (out). You can zoom to 1000% of your drawing size

Center the whole drawing on one or more pages

Lines

Choose any line style: straight, arc, segmented, curved, double lines, filled lines, or create your own

Connect lines to create custom shapes

Line hops made easy! Lines do not intersect unless you want them to, thanks to automatic line hops Click - let go - click line drawing

Automatic spacing and sizing of connectors

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

Connect lines across pages in multi-page drawings

Attach text to lines

Text

Just type! Text automatically formats inside or next to any symbol or shape

Built-in spell checker can be set to automatically check spelling as you type, or used separately

Add words to your custom dictionary

Symbols automatically grow to accommodate more text, or text shrinks to fit - it's your choice

Automatic word wrap within symbols Insert popular symbols from a Word-like dialog

Justify text left, right, centered, or flush Rotate text by any angle

Automatically format bulleted text

Hyperlink text to other drawings, documents, web pages, or programs

Tables

Choose from pre-formatted tables

AutoFill automatically populates header cells with numbers, months, days, or dates

Add symbols and photos to cells

Specify border and background colors for each cell or the whole table

Join and split cells to create complex tables Insert bitmaps in cells, and scale and crop as necessary Insert and edit photos within table cells

Lock graphics to cells so they don't move as you reformat the table

Customization

FreeForm drawing tool lets you create your own shapes, lines, and arrowheads

Edit existing symbols to define text placement (inside it, under it, etc.), where connections can be made to its borders, and how it will resize when stretched or scaled

Put what you use most in one convenient location by creating your own symbol and shape library

Change the sorting order of symbols in any library

Create custom connection points to meet your diagramming needs

Create and store your own custom gradients

Define and store your own styles

Colors, Borders, and 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

Apply pre-defined themes to your entire drawing, which automatically control colors, textures, styles, and backgrounds

Apply colors, border styles, and fill patterns to objects or groups of objects, including 3-D outside effects

Apply inside effects which give a raised look to lines, shapes, text, and borders

Enrich your table cells, lines, and text with sophisticated gradients

Add textures-such as tile, brick, etc.-to table cells, lines, and text with an easy-to-use textures dialog box

Create and store custom gradients

Printing

Anything your printer can handle, SmartDraw can output, from standard sizes to poster prints

Print to scale Scale your drawing by a percentage Specify the scale in printed inches per drawing ruler-inch

Fit the drawing to a fixed number of pages

Set scaling to a minimum of 1% and a maximum of 1000%

Free Help and Support

Examples provide lots of ideas and starting points

Online help for every command

Free live support - call toll-free and speak to a technical support representative, 6:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific Time Monday through Friday, 8:00AM to 2:00PM Pacific Time Saturday and Sunday

Compatibility

Works seamlessly with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint - move files and data with just a click

Easily use Microsoft clip art

Export and import images in popular graphics formats including WMF, BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF, and many others

Save your drawings as PDF files for almost universal sharing

Save your drawings for the web as GIF, JPG, or HTML files - HTML files automatically have working hyperlinks

Email a drawing to others in a single click

Advanced Import/Export Filters: 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)

Amazing Features

Ease of Use
No design experience or even artistic skill is required to create professional charts, diagrams and graphics with SmartDraw: the "talent" is built-in. With SmartDraw you can create flow charts, block diagrams, data flow diagrams, decision trees, organizational charts, network diagrams, floor plans, process flow diagrams, schematics, Gantt charts, calendars, quality management diagrams, electrical and mechanical drawings, chemistry diagrams, timelines, space plans, flyers, posters, banners, maps, forms, and more in just a few minutes—there is no learning curve at all.

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. This feature is especially handy when you may be, for example, connecting a window to a wall within a floor plan.

Automatically insert connecting lines between shapes using Auto Flow. Just drag a symbol next to another symbol and a line automatically and perfectly connects the two shapes without you having to lift a finger.

Work with a friendly, familiar interface (similar to Word).

Org Chart Builder/Export: Build an organizational chart automatically with the Org Chart Builder. Simply import a properly formatted file containing your org chart data (such as a spreadsheet) and SmartDraw automatically builds the chart for you. This also works "in reverse" as you can export to a data file from an existing chart.

Calendar Builder: plan as far ahead into the future as you desire; just enter a month and year, and—presto!—you have the calendar you want.

A built-in spell checker 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 eye-catching, compelling results. In the SmartDraw Suite Edition, you can take advantage of more than 60,000 graphics—symbols, templates, and more—and enjoy functionality such as line hop, automatic dimensioning, and FreeForm drawing.

Thousands of ready-to-use symbols and templates for flowcharting, floor planning, org charting, software diagramming, Gantt charting, landscaping, and much more. 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 FreeForm 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.

Auto Flow:
automatically insert connecting lines between shapes. Just drag a symbol next to another symbol and a segmented line automatically and perfectly connects the two shapes without you having to lift a finger.

Area Calculation enables you to 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 you.

Anti-aliasing ensures smooth curves, lines, and text.

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. SmartDraw 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.

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.

Integration with Other Programs

SmartDraw works with what you know. A fundamental benefit of SmartDraw 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 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 business 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!

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.

Share your drawing even with those who don't have SmartDraw using the free Viewer.

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. (How can we offer this? Simple: SmartDraw is so easy to use that you won't need support...but it's nice to know that it's there.)

As a SmartDraw purchaser, you also get to put your drawings on your free SmartDrawNet web page with one click, a wonderful way to further involve coworkers, family and friends in your work. (Learn more about SmartDrawNet, your personal gallery hosted by 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.

Automatic Alignment and Formatting:
It's a SNAP with SmartDraw One of the hardest parts in creating professional charts and drawings is getting all your symbols and lines 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 align a flowchart, org chart, or floor plan 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.

Finely adjust the size and position of symbols using the arrow keys to nudge them 1/100 of an inch at a time.

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.

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.

Automatic Connectors Automatic connectors—especially helpful when building org charts—come in many styles for many needs, and enable inclusion of custom connection points. These special lines keep shapes evenly spaced and arranged.

Drop shapes on connectors to automatically format charts.

Auto Spacing:
Perfectly space shapes and lines within automatic connectors with a click.

Auto Sizing:
Perfectly size shapes on automatic connectors (which may have stretched as you entered text) with a click.

Create custom connection points to meet your specific diagramming needs.

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.

Hyperlink your text to other drawings, documents, web pages, or even programs.

Print anything from standard sizes to huge posters.

Print to scale (as shown in the dialog box below).

Enjoy the option 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 Image Plug-In enables you to view and edit digital images and photos, and insert them into your org charts, floor plans, flowcharts, and all your SmartDraw drawings.

The SmartDraw Image Plug-In is the only imaging application fully integrated with SmartDraw. Transform, enhance, and personalize your drawings by using the faces, places, and things actually involved in what you're communicating—the people in an organization, the furniture in a floor plan.

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.

Tables
Easily build tables, which are particularly useful for creating timelines and business forms. 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.

Design business forms, timelines, and spreadsheets using SmartDraw's tables.

Add symbols and photos to table cells.

AutoFill automatically populates table headers with numbers, months or days, and automatically generates date ranges.

Anchor bars and symbols to tables, which is especially useful for Gantt charts and calendars.

Specify border and background colors for each cell or the whole table.

Join and split cells to create complex tables.

Insert bitmaps in cells, and scale and crop as necessary.

Lock graphics to cells so they don't move as you reformat the table.

Edit photos within table cells with the Image Plug-In.

Importance of SmartDraw in the Quality Market

Smart Draw VP 2012 is an excellent example of the rapidly growing designing and diagramming genre of the software market. For any company committed to the genuine meaning of the total quality process, using the various quality tools in the workplace has become common, and now these newly emerging software drawing tools are also being fully integrated in the work of quality teams. Smart Draw VP represents one of the most sophisticated and fully developed drawing programs now on the market, and it will well serve the needs of these quality companies, especially when needing to quickly and easily create process flow charts. For staff with little or no prior experience with designing a flow chart with a computer program, Smart Draw VP will certainly be well received.

Smart Draw VP holds value for any business striving to compete in today's international markets, and will provide the computer tool staff need to create and review their internal processes critical to their profitability, product quality, and customer responsiveness. In these situations, the easier the program is to use to produce these charts and diagrams, the more likely the users will continue to repeatedly use the program.

In today's quality oriented workplace, the use of flowcharts, cause-and-effect and other standardized quality tools has become common in most larger firms competing in the global marketplace. For quality professionals looking for an easy-to-use flowchart tool, Smart Draw VP will provide all they need to document and produce in paper or electronic means their processes for review by quality improvement teams.

While Smart Draw VP may lack a few of the more technically complex of the programming abilities in other, more expensive diagramming programs (VB, SQL), nevertheless its extensive lineup of multiple tools, features, and controls are very easy to use and easy to learn. I suspect many companies will quickly find themselves very satisfied with the nominal investment in this important program.

Targeted Customers

With their lineup of editions of SmartDraw, SmartDraw.com is aiming at the business and manufacturing 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, Smart Draw VP may seem at first to be very similar to Microsoft Visio or Micrografx Flowcharter, I found Smart Draw VP easier to get up and running than when I first learned these other two drawing programs.

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 Smart Draw VP to accompany their ongoing quality commitment.

The support for the HTML format means that Smart Draw VP files can now be loaded for access either via a company Intranet, or through the Internet. This adds additional value for companies needing to share these process flow charts with team members that may be located around the country or the world.

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, Smart Draw VP will allow users to convert their Visio files to SmartDraw format. The File Conversion Wizard in Smart Draw VP can convert entire folders of Visio files into SmartDraw format in one easy operation.

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.

Overall, I think SmartDraw has excellent potential for use in most businesses, while Visio tends to be more relevant in companies needing to challenge the more complex features and programming controls found in Visio.

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 company that has yet to standardize on a drawing program strongly consider Smart Draw VP as their charting and diagramming program of choice. Technical or engineering firms will find Smart Draw VP a valuable addition to the lineup of drawing and design tools they may likely already have integrated into their operations.

5 Reasons to Choose SmartDraw Instead of Visio

SmartDraw is the friendly and effective alternative to Microsoft Visio.

1. SmartDraw is better for ordinary computer users than Microsoft Visio SmartDraw is designed for ordinary computer users. Unlike Microsoft Visio, which is difficult to learn, a new user can become instantly productive with SmartDraw. SmartDraw makes it easy for anyone to create professional-quality graphics in minutes—no experience or training required. Learn what users like you say about SmartDraw and Visio.

2. SmartDraw includes innovative SmartTemplate technology The key to SmartDraw's success is its unique SmartTemplate technology—something the Microsoft Visio software doesn't have. SmartTemplates makes creating business graphics as easy as typing a letter with a word processor. SmartDraw has developed hundreds of SmartTemplates for every type of business graphic. Each SmartTemplate loads a diagram specific SmartPanel command set and the associated SmartHelp step-by-step instructions.

By using a SmartTemplate, a user becomes an instant expert on how to make a complex diagram and with SmartDraw's gallery of professionally designed styles, an instant graphic designer too.

3. SmartDraw is more versatile than Microsoft Visio SmartDraw is aimed at the millions of ordinary computer users who want to create attractive and effective business graphics, but lack the expertise and time to learn complicated graphics software designed for experts. SmartDraw is the choice for creating more than 33 types of charts and diagrams, including flowcharts, Gantt charts, timelines, organizational charts, calendars, flyers, floor plans, mind maps, technical diagrams, and more. Each day more than 6,000 people install SmartDraw for the first time and more than 10 million users have downloaded SmartDraw.

4. SmartDraw includes free product support. Microsoft Visio? No. SmartDraw provides free technical support, including a toll-free support number. You interact directly with our experts who are trained to address your questions quickly and effectively.

5. SmartDraw is risk free Your investment in SmartDraw is risk-free. You can try it for free for no obligation, and your purchase is backed by a no-questions-asked 30-day money-back guarantee.

SmartDraw is a better choice than Visio.

SmartDraw: A More Productive Drawing Tool Than Visio

More often than not, Microsoft's Visio is chosen by IT staff not because it's the most productive tool but because everything else they buy is from Microsoft. But productivity is achieved not by how software works with software, but by how people work with software. And people who have tried both agree that SmartDraw beats Visio in delivering "instant productivity," and there are no training costs and no support costs either. Why? Because SmartDraw requires no training to use and includes FREE support!

Free, Live, In-House Support
Unlike Visio, SmartDraw provides free, live support via phone and email. How can we do this? Simple: the product is so easy to use you won't even have to call support!

You can also take advantage of tips, tutorials, as well as built-in SmartPanels and SmartHelp. And with SmartDraw, you are getting help directly from our in-house experts, not from someone just reading you text from a corporate database.

SmartDraw Is More Affordable
It's not just instant productivity and free support driving people to choose SmartDraw over Visio; it's also costs—both time and money.

With Visio: there is almost always training required (at a cost!); there are often license renewals (at a cost!); there can be maintenance (at a cost!); and, amazingly, VISIO'S PURCHASE PRICE IS HIGHER TO BEGIN WITH!

SmartDraw's Freedom and Volume License pricing is a fraction of the cost of Visio's. With SmartDraw there are no "software assurance" fees required to get upgrade pricing in future years; your license is perpetual and upgrades are optional. SmartDraw also delivers more bang for the buck via its non-existent training costs.

SmartDraw Works with What You Know
SmartDraw works perfectly with Microsoft Office! Placing SmartDraw drawings into a Word, PowerPoint, or Excel document is literally as simple as copy and paste, and vice versa: you can add graphs, equations, images, and fancy text created in an Office application to SmartDraw with a simple copy and paste, too.

And if you've already been using Visio and want to switch to SmartDraw, SmartDraw makes it as easy as possible for you. SmartDraw's built-in File Conversion Wizard will convert existing Visio files to the SmartDraw format. If people on your staff still require Visio, you can use SmartDraw and Visio together in the same environment.

However, if cost and immediate usability aren't that critical for you and you are still debating between SmartDraw and Visio, check out some more basic reasons to choose SmartDraw.

Basic Reasons to Choose SmartDraw Over Visio
SmartDraw Is Better for Everyday Business Users: Although Visio is a powerful product, it is best suited to technical experts. It can be overwhelming to the average user who just wants to draw presentation-quality diagrams—without having to learn a complex program. SmartDraw provides ample drawing power while remaining easy enough for anyone to use.

SmartDraw Is More Versatile than Visio
SmartDraw includes more than 20,000 ready-made symbols and 2,400 templates that cover a much broader array of diagram types than Visio. SmartDraw also lets you import or create your own symbol libraries, allowing you to easily customize the solution for your business.

SmartDraw Creates Better Presentation-Quality Graphics
Most of Visio's built-in symbols are simple line drawings and stick figures. SmartDraw includes tens of thousands of rich, colorful built-in symbols to help you look like an artist even if you can't draw a straight line.

SmartDraw also offers robust, ready-made color themes (with shadows, glows, and gradients) that will give your entire drawing a professional finish with a few mouse-clicks, whereas Visio offers some simplistic, ready-made color schemes that don't really compare.

And if it's clip art you want, SmartDraw gives you more than 7,000 built-in clip art graphics, whereas Visio gives you less than 500.

Over 20,000 built-in, full-color images

And unlike Visio, SmartDraw maintains imported bitmapped images in their compressed state and allows them to be edited, cropped, rotated, filtered, and more, simply by double-clicking on them.

Add it all up, and the savings and productivity gains your department or organization can enjoy using SmartDraw are endless!

System Requirements

Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000
256MB RAM
3GB free hard disk space

Since this latest version of Smart Draw VP has been designed to work in Windows 7 and to integrate with Office 2010, it will perform best and certainly look the best on a higher end machine that can support the Aero functionality of Windows 7 and the transparent, glass-like features in the ribbon that will be maximized on high end machines. Of course, these superficial appearance features are just icing on the cake of all the many powerful functions of this powerful program that will perform best on higher end machines.

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.

Price

$297 SmartDraw VP 2012
$ 99 Upgrade

Contact the company for additional information on pricing for more licensed users. This is a very attractive price, especially when compared with the price for Microsoft's Visio, and should result in being well received in the market. The price is also the same as the prior version of SmartDraw.

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 began its life in 1994 as graphics software, competing with Microsoft's Visio and other similar products. Beginning in 2006, through intensive product research, the company noticed that mainstream business people were interested in creating visuals, not just the technically savvy experts that had dominated the field in the 1990s. These new users did not have the time or patience to manually arrange shapes on the page as graphics software requires. Graphics software was fundamentally too time consuming and difficult to use! SmartDraw set out to invent a new kind of application that would make creating visuals as easy as creating written documents with a word processor: The visual processor.

Just as anyone can use a word processor to quickly create professional-looking written documents, anyone can use a visual processor to just as quickly create professional-looking visuals.

These critical automatic formatting features first found their way into SmartDraw in 2007, and were completed in 2010 with the release of SmartDraw VP, the world's first visual processor.

Historically, sales to individuals in business have accounted for the majority of revenues. Today, however, because SmartDraw can now be used by anyone in an organization, sales of licenses for 100 users or more is the fastest growing segment, increasing at 200% per year.

Today, SmartDraw is one of the most sophisticated digital marketing organizations in the world with more than 90,000 unique visitors to its web site and more than 12,000 installations of its trial software every day.

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
800-768-3729
858-225-3300
FAX: 858-225-3390
www.smartdraw.com