Mark from Bethel Bible Church. Industry: Religious Institutions. Time Used: Less than 2 years. Easily the most frustrating software that I have to use. I am unfortunately not aware of any other options in that price range that have the simplicity of interface and the features I need. This software would be great if it worked and if customer support wasn't abysmal. The interface would be great if it worked. At the price, it would be a great value, if it worked. Many, many bugs.
In particular, things often move when they shouldn't, and saving your work never works like you expect it to. In particular, if you save a project, via the "save" button, then "save as" another file, the work that was "saved" on the original is lost. They refuse to acknowledge this bug, but, over the phone, they did explain to me how to use templates, which gives a decent workaround for this bug, for me.
Which brings me to: 2. When you contact customer support via email they are absurdly unhelpful. The last time I sent a bug report in, I included step by step instructions for reproducing the bug. Every single reply I received had nothing to do with the bug. I continued to ask "could you reproduce this bug on your end? Bugs are not a thing that customer service seems to be allowed to talk about, which is unfortunate, given how full of bugs this software is.
Barry from City of Birmingham. Company Size: 1,, employees. Industry: Government Administration. Project management and organization development. Newer version does not allow import of Excel or Text files to build org charts. This is a show stopper for me! Reasons for Switching to SmartDraw. Earlier version had the org chart import feature that I liked, along with the price. Since the org chart import Excel and Text files feature has been eliminated, I'll have to look for a different solution.
Hi Barry, Thank you for the feedback. The Excel and text file import still exist for org charts. Whether you are using the online or downloaded version of SmartDraw, they are located in the SmartPanel on the left once you have opened an org chart.
Hopefully this helps. If you require more, please let us know. Thank you, Chris support smartdraw. Roberto from serfit srl. Industry: Information Services. An inexpensive but fantastic software for both network diagrams and any other business and other needs. Cheap but very good. I' using SmartDraw for many years and my opinion is the same :An inexpensive but fantastic software for both network diagrams and any other business and other needs.
I installed the version a couple of months ago but opening old files was particularly slow. I tried completely uninstalling the software and reinstalling it but didn't notice any improvements. I spoke to other users of different company and they confirmed the same opinion. Reasons for Choosing SmartDraw. Company Size: 5,, employees. BizzDesign is the best diagramming tool I've used. This is a heavy duty, feature packed software.
Whereas most software with this degree of functionality is usually not intuitive, BizzDesign is. It is incredible for being able to integrated documentation with process flows and diagrams. Carl from Tracts for life. Company Size: 1 employee. Industry: Arts and Crafts. I am able to organize,plan,and create forms,documents for my ministry,and hobby,and it makes it so much easier to do.
This software not only helps you draw but has other activities you can plan,organize any kind of project you want to build. I got the free trial and it is great.
Hi Carl, Thank you for the positive review. Good to hear you are getting so much use out of the software. If you need anything from us at all, please let us know. Industry: Utilities. Time Used: Less than 6 months. Though I used this for creating mind-maps most of the time, it did contain all the tools one would require for any type of chart.
The software does need some getting used to but once you're familiar with it, it does save a lot of time. If you're not used to a dedicated chartmaker, give this one a try. You'll never go back to manually drawing flowcharts, mind maps or hierarchies.
SmartDraw comes with a large number of templates that are customizable. You'll rarely have to build a chart from scratch with those. The software also consists of almost all the tools one would need to make a chart. Using of the software does need a bit getting used to and the workspace is not the most state-of-the-art for this software category.
Steven from Cru. Quickly update drawings, org charts and floor plans to keep your team moving! Very easy interface to work with, and that helped me quickly set out the office layout for our person team and modify as people's requirements changed through the process. I've used this for years to plan out the cubicle layout of our office, the details and features make it very easy to visualize and help people determine the best fits.
Once you get the general structure it's really easy to keep things up to date. A little bit of learning curve and the huge variety of detailed images available is a little hard to navigate. Great platform for simple submittal drawings. If you are trying to do small professional projects, or simply create a blueprint of you home, SmartDraw's ease of use and robust set of options make it the smart choice over competitors. Where this software really shines for our business is its ease of use for submittal drawings when bidding and creating contracts for jobs.
It allows us to empower our salesmen to create their own submittals without the expense or training needed for some of the more "professional" suites. This means for smaller projects we do not need to tie up our senior estimators, leaving their time free and better spent with CAD. What this means is that for job cost, we are able to use lower wage employees to perform simpler tasks and not eat into the margins of a job from utilizing higher paid engineers.
It can be a bit finicky in trying to get it to do exactly what you want it to do. Its ease of use sometimes means that you are fighting those very elements that make it easy to make it do what you want it to do.
Snap to grids and the like, while toggle-able, provide an annoyance when they should "just work". Simon from Naikoon. Industry: Construction. Many of our processes were formalized using Smartdraw, unfortunately we have since moved on.
Great software for flow charts and process maps. Used extensively for 3 years under a one time license. Was only available for Windows at time of last use, since then it has moved to a subscription, web-based platform which is a significant cost considering other better-value or free softwares that can do the same.
Hi Simon, Thank you for the feedback. If it helps, we do still offer SmartDraw for Windows, which is a one time payment with no required ongoing fees in order to use it.
Anything more, please let us know. Nicky from Entrance Design. Industry: Design. I've used other floor planners and this one is definitely the easiest to use at a great price.
Limited symbol options specific to interior design. Hi Nicky, Thank you for the positive review and for the feedback. I'll pass the review along to our development team, so we can take a look at the PDF export and file opening issues you mentioned. If you reply back to me, or contact our support using the below info, we can further investigate and help.
If there is any other way we can be of assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. I love doing flow charts, timelines, mind maps, decision trees and other visual presentations. With SmartDraw, I can create visual documents in an easy way, in addition to streamline the work, smartDraw has templates that come with a library of shapes and symbols, which I can use with just drag them to the worksheet.
I can add textures and photos to further improve the document. Gulshan from OATI. Industry: Computer Software. Over-all experience as per my requirements is good and doing my work done easily and fast. Very easy to draw flowcharts. Easily import and export visio. Available at cheap price and can easily replace visio i believe which is much costlier. One can use its rich library of colours. Templates help alot to quickly built mocks. Industry: Restaurants. First time I used to submit a drawing for my business and it took me no time to complete my drawing.
It saved me a lot of money by not hiring an architect to draw the set up of my restaurant which was one of the first steps to get an approval. Easy to navigate and ease of use. It took me a few clicks and I was able to find all kinds of things I needed to work on my projects. One of the requirements for my business was to submit a blueprint and I was told I need an Architect for that but I was also told that if I can draw and provide details in my drawings, it will be accepted so I purchased SmartDraw although I have no knowledge how to use it.
It was easy It didn't have some of the drawings I needed so I have to improvise. This took me a little time come up with the desired drawing of object I needed; but it still worked.
Oscar from Spectranet Limited. Industry: Internet. Great for new users to computer aided designs. I tried Smartdraw for the first time in and I was impressed by the ease of use ; I understood the major workings around this program in a matter of days. I have used Smart draw for Gantt style charting , simple drawings ,including floor drawings when I moved to my new home a while back. Smartdraw provides users with a variety of modules ,making it a program which can be leveraged by different professionals in different career fields.
Smartdraw doesn't allow for remote collaboration like what I have come to expect from months of recently embracing Lucidchart. I have also found out that when creating Gantt charts with this program , I am limited in the number of coloumns I am allowed to use. Wojciech from Explorer-Consulting. I use SmartDraw to prepare visual documents in management area. SmartDraw has tons of images to support visual documentation. It's great way to share knowledge with others using this solution.
I use SmartDraw to create: process maps, easy mindmaps, data flows and creative mix of ideas. Sometimes there is good opportunity to export document as image file and put to MS Excel and add contextual values to present bigger picture of business in easy to understand way complex but easy to see relations. I'd like to see more options in mindmapping area, to be able to manage task information in advanced way.
It is the special program for the realization of flow diagrams, with a large number of cliparts. SmartDraw comes with many types of templates that include flow charts, bar graphs and charts. If you do not find a template that you like, you can create a customized template that suits your project, Photos, and images.
Add photos and images to the document with the import to lump sum, copy and paste the commands. You can also import images and photos from your digital camera, and then manipulate them inside SmartDraw until you have the effect you want. Each template comes with a library of shapes and symbols, to use these shapes and symbols, simply drag them to your worksheet and place them where you want.
You can add textures and photos to further improve the document. And so you can export the mind map to any of these programs to be able to share. You can export the file with just one click of your mouse.
Export the file to the web or send it anywhere in the world. It consumes abundant resources if your machine is slow it can become tedious to work, besides its installation is slow.
SmartDraw - Not quite a Visio replacement-- but pretty close. If documents need to be traded with users who are using Visio, there will be issues-- especially if drawings need to be updated or converted across several users. It has most of the power of Visio with some added discovery things so if one is starting without the requirement of Visio integration, its a solid, but pricy tool.
Lots of examples and help videos Enterprise discovery tools are great but expensive. While they may provide some help, there is not much detail about what steps to take when things DO NOT work -- so one needs to call in and request support. No exactly the fastest turnaround. Didn't choose one. As stated above, Smart Draw only eliminates other tools, if there is no requirements to share or update documents from those tools.
I still have both on my systems. Karen from Del Mar college. Industry: Higher Education. I have had only positive experiences with the use of Smart Draw. Smart Draw is relatively easy to use. It has all the various kinds of charts and graphs on its website you can imagine. Smart Draw does not have any negative features. I used it to teach Quality Improvement concepts. It was great!
Hi Karen, Thank you for the positive review. Glad to hear SmartDraw is working well for you. If we can help in any way, please let us know. We offer free phone and email support should anything be needed. Create simple and complex workflows and diagrams. The interphase is awesome, and you have no limits using this software you can a simple diagram showing a workflow or you can do a complex net design for established a network in an office building, you can even design plans of houses or do 3D models for engineering processes.
It is really expensive, if your are going to buy it be sure of spend that amount of monet in one software, the best option is use the online version. Matthew from CentreMarc Construction Company. Great first impression. This is definitely not going to replace a major CAD software, but if you're looking for a fairly inexpensive, fairly easy to use drawing software, this is a great option.
I only used the free trial so far, but intend on purchasing this software because I was impressed with the value it offers and the usability. Excellent value for the money. Contains a wealth of symbol libraries and is relatively easy to pick up. Some of the options for line thickness, etc. The snap function barely works sometimes and works too well other times. Rickell from PAJ. SmartDraw makes it easier than any other app to quickly create professional-quality diagrams.
Helpful Smart Panel feature. Good integration options. It is very Easy to use. It has a desktop and online version that allows you to work in any place, it is very useful. Smart Draw is a very complete application for all types of diagrams that you need. Weak collaboration features. It is very expensive you asked me. The speed of the online version sometimes fluctuates negatively. Industry: Consumer Goods. Product was pretty good to use as a beginner.
Not over stuffed with functions. But those functions you may want. Program was a little easier to use then some other programs. Wasnt overly difficult. Not as good features that other programs offer. Sorry this didn't help. Thanks for your feedback. I'm writing this reply to follow up on this thread. When you have time, you are welcome to come back and share any updates with us. I've contacted SmartDraw asking if they would let me use a trial version of their software. I want to see if SmartDraw can open the Visio file I created and allow me to continue editing that block diagram without crashing my computer.
As for troubleshooting Visio: when I have time I'll get to that - but, as always, I am very busy with work and cannot afford to be distracted with Visio's memory leak issue resulting in crashing my computer.
I am not sure what version of Visio Professional I have installed. Also, one of the first things I tried was uninstalling and re-installing Visio - but that did not work. I have documented Visio's memory leak issue and posted to a YouTube Video. Thanks for posting back. When you have time, you can try the above suggestions to troubleshoot the issue.
Also, here is a reference that mentions how to check the version in different Visio products. For the over 40s set and maybe some users under 40 , the size and legibility of the type still is a problem.
It can also be very difficult to create accurate technical drawings from scratch. SmartDraw can import data from a database file and automatically create charts and other info graphics. If you have data that you want to crunch and display, SmartDraw may not be the best option: Tableau Public is free to download and will create stunning infographics using your raw data, without the need for you to do any additional math.
The trial lasts 7 calendar days or 5 runs whichever comes sooner. In addition, SmartDraw watermarks printouts and exports during the trial period, so plan ahead accordingly, and be prepared to use the trial thoroughly at one to five sittings.
Unfortunately, you may not be able to get a full sense of the program within the limitations of the trial.
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