Instant diagrams - six business graphics software packages with diagramming capabilities - includes summary and related article on flowchart software packages - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, May, 1995 by William Harrel

You can always count on Corel to provide lots of goodies. CorelFlow comes with 2,000 drag-and-drop symbols, 1,000 clip art images, 1,000 photographs from the Corel Professional Photos library, and 100 TrueType fonts. Most of this may seem like window dressing---chances are you won't even scratch the surface of the 2,000 drag-and-drop symbols--but it's good to know there's so much at your disposal.

Missing from CorelFlow, however, are the fancy gradient fills so easily defined in CorelDraw. It would also be nice if the program let you add such special effects as fitting text to path or creating three-dimensional objects--features that are available in IntelliDraw and ClarisImpact, to name a couple. These limitations aside, CorelFlow is a solid diagramming tool.

IntelliDraw 2.0

Rating: ***1/2

WIN/MAC

Whether you need to create simple drawings to embellish reports or draw plans for redesigning the office, IntelliDraw will more than handle the job. The program features a standard draw-program interface, sophisticated technical drawing tools, simple animation capabilities, as well as basic presentation features.

IntelliDraw is flat-out powerful, but you'll have to spend some time mastering all its rich, innovative features. Once you get the hang of it, though, you'll come to love this program. Adobe takes some of the pain out of learning the program with a well-done Getting Started tutorial that covers almost all the program's important features. Also the Windows and Mac versions are identical, so it's easy to distribute your drawings across platforms.

A palette of Action Buttons lets you lock objects on a page, group and ungroup objects, and perform a number of functions that other programs require you to wade through layers of dialog boxes to achieve. IntelliDraw's Toolbox is full of easy-to-use drawing tools. The Connector tool, for example, allows you to draw lines that automatically snap to and connect objects. You can lock, stretch, or rotate them, as well as draw connections at right angles.

Also impressive is the AutoAlign feature. The cursor becomes a pair of crosshairs that follows your mouse as you draw. The crosshairs allow you to align the object being drawn to other objects. AutoAlign also lets you align existing objects in relation to one another. When, for example, two or more objects are exactly centered, the guides form a cross over them.

One of the best things about IntelliDraw is the way it intelligently handles clip art. Changing a pine tree to an oak tree, for instance, takes just a couple of mouse clicks. If you want to change a chair into a sofa, simply stretch its end points. No, you don't get a distorted, elongated chair as you do with other clip art--the program actually converts the chair to a sofa.

It's innovative features such as these that make IntelliDraw one of the best of the bunch. It's harder to learn than the other packages, but it's worth the effort.

Visio 3.0

Rating: ****

WIN

Visio pioneered the concept of drag-and-drop drawing: grabbing a predefined shape from a palette and moving it onto your work space. Three versions later, Visio is still the king of the hill on the Windows platform, ideal for all types of drawings, including floor plans, landscaping, just about anything you can imagine.