SmartDraw

category: Tool Reviews
by Alexis Leon

SmartDraw is one of the most popular graphics software. It can be used for many purposes from creating flowcharts, high quality illustrations and diagrams, project management chart, floor plans, landscapes and so on.

One can use the excellent templates available to jump start the process or start from scratch depending on the level of comfort and the nature of the drawing. One advantage of SmartDraw is its short learning curve and one can create professional quality illustration, diagrams and charts in a matter of minutes. While a creative and expert artist can make the drawings and illustrations come alive, an average user can also create high quality charts and figures. The short learning curve and ease-of-use are two factors that make this exemplary product more popular and usable.

The people at SmartDraw have created detailed videos, whitepapers, sample diagrams and charts, and a host of other materials that will help the user in becoming proficient in using SmartDraw very quickly.

There are many other uses for SmartDraw like presentations, business process diagrams, flow charts, project management charts, landscapes, floor plans, organizational charts, mind maps, etc. In this review, I will concentrate on how SmartDraw will help you in creating the drawings and illustrations for the book or article that you are writing.
SmartDraw can help you in two ways. First, when you want to convey an idea of a diagram to your graphic designer, instead of a hand drawn figure, you can create it in a matter of minutes using SmartDraw and save it in any of the popular graphic file formats.

The second and more important use is that you can create your own drawings and illustrations without the help of a professional graphic artist. SmartDraw templates and an excellent searchable image library help you in creating high quality images that will add the extra value to your book or article. The features like aligning, grouping, rotating, ordering, making all objects of equal size, and so on makes your tasks easier and quality of the images better. For example, given below are some of the images created using SmartDraw.

You can get more details from the SmartDraw website. You can download a trial version of the software and see the features before buying it. You can choose the right business graphic using the Encyclopedia of Business Graphics. You can read through the Business Graphics bulletins with links to white papers, webinars, tutorials, success stories, and more at. You can learn more techniques and tips by studying the examples. In addition to the above resources there are step-by-step tutorials for creating a perfect diagram in minutes.

SmartDraw is a must for every technical author as it will improve the productivity and also the quality of the images making the article, essay, or book more interesting and readable. I recommend it to all authors and technical writers.

Tags: Drawing, Graphics, Illustration, SmartDraw

Comments

2 Comments so far

Laurence@SmartDraw | 13 February 2008, 18:31
I’m glad to see you enjoy the software!

About how often do you find yourself making drawings as a technical writer?
Alexis Leon | 14 February 2008, 02:51
SmartDraw is one tool that I use almost on a daily basis and I do a lot of writing and prefer to include illustrations and drawings wherever possible to improve the readability.

Recently Written