SmartDraw is a software program that is designed to help the average person to create great-looking diagrams, quickly and easily. But in my last job, I had very few opportunities to use it, so I really didn’t get a chance to use the latest version, SmartDraw 2010, for some real business applications.
All that changed in January when I took a new job as marketing manager for a small safety training products firm. My first major project has been to help this company to launch an ambitious, multi-faceted training curriculum to the mining industry. Based on a blended learning model, it incorporates web-based training modules, a PC-based simulator, and a variety of on-the-job training tools for trainers and trainees. It can also include a learning management system and several other elements.
The bottom line? This is a complex product. Obviously, it would take a mind-numbing volume of words to adequately describe how all of the pieces worked together to provide a powerful training solution. How could we communicate it quickly and simply to prospective customers?
Being a visual kinda guy, I realized almost immediately that one of the best ways to do that would be to create a visual that showed how all of these elements work together to provide a complete training solution. Using SmartDraw 2010, I created a series of diagrams that became awesome talking points with my boss, as we worked our way through successive iterations and came closer to a complete and accurate representation of the training curriculum.
Here’s what I learned about SmartDraw 2010 in the process of working with it during the past two-and-a-half months:
- It is intuitive and easy to use; all of its functions behaved as I would expect them to, and there were no ugly surprises.
- It makes great use of right-click commands, so you can accomplish common tasks without mousing over to the ribbon toolbar.
- The set of templates in SmartDraw 2010 is very impressive, and more importantly, very useful. You can easily take one of them and use it as a starting point for your own diagram.
- The straightforward, well-designed set of diagramming tools in this program made it easy for me to quickly create some compelling, great-looking diagrams that got incorporated into a number of planning documents, and could also be given to our developers and designers, to incorporate directly into sales brochures and web pages – or to inspire them to create something more polished and colorful in Adobe Illustrator.
The bottom line is that SmartDraw 10 has helped to make me look good to my new employer. I think they appreciate the fact that I’m able to think and represent my ideas visually – thanks to this excellent program.
Wallace Tait · 778 weeks ago
I've just today transitioned to SmartDraw 2010 from the 2009 version, and what an exponential improvement 2010 has offered the users.
The dashboard interface is ingenious; the Visual mapping developers should be doing this too.
And, the Template approach to this product in many cases makes me want to use it over any of the leading Visual mapping app.
I wonder why the Visual mapping developers have shied away from the template approach accessed through a dashboard interface........., Hmm, now there an idea for Mindjet, Cs Odessa, Simtech et al.
Brian Turner · 777 weeks ago
I regard this as a fundamental limitation,