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I need a flow diagram / mind-mapping tool

by ship69
10 replies
Hello

I am new here.

I need a tool that lets me create flow diagams that:

A) Allows me to hide entire sections at a single click of a mouse

B) Allows me to easily change the sort order of text boxes in a sequence e.g. just by dragging and dropping boxes.

Do you know anything free / v low cost (e.g. similar to draw.io) that lets you do that?

Background:
When designing a system I find flow diagrams whose relationships are 'hardwired' encourages very pedantic thinking. I want to 'blackbox' entire sections into higher level business processes. Likewise I often do not know what the sequence of events will be and will often need to change it.

I think what I am looking for is half way between a flow diagramming tool and a mind-mapping tool. Mind Mapping tools (like MindJet's MindManager which I sometimes use) allow me to do both the above, however the problem with mind-mapping tools is that
a) There is no direction of flow
b) Decision trees are hard to represent
c) They tend to be restricted into a strict hierarchy

Any suggestions?

Thanks

J
#diagram #flow #mindmapping #tool
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I need a flow diagram / mind-mapping tool
    I'm not reading the list, maybe try this:





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    • Profile picture of the author Shane Williams
      Check out the following. Hope you find one you like.
      https://www.lucidchart.com/
      https://www.mindmeister.com/
      Lovely Charts | Diagram software
      https://www.gliffy.com/
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      • Profile picture of the author ship69
        Originally Posted by Shane Williams View Post


        Thanks

        - LucidChart - no free version. That's a deal breaker for me.

        - mindmeister - hierarchical info only. Me thinks cant do flow diagrams.

        - lovelycharts - no obvious way to hide / minimise groups of things. (Also the means of connecting also is v clunky). Also no free version.

        - gliffy.com - also no way to hide / group things. Free version only allows 5 diagram (a bit mean) and paid version is expensive at $59/year.


        PS I also found draw.io which has a pretty cool interface and appears to be completely free - yipee! (What is their biz model - how do they survive?). But sadly it doesn't seem to have any way to hide/minimise groups of things. i.e. The grouping is a visual thing only.
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        • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
          Originally Posted by ship69 View Post

          Thanks

          - LucidChart - no free version. That's a deal breaker for me.

          - mindmeister - hierarchical info only. Me thinks cant do flow diagrams.

          - lovelycharts - no obvious way to hide / minimise groups of things. (Also the means of connecting also is v clunky). Also no free version.

          - gliffy.com - also no way to hide / group things. Free version only allows 5 diagram (a bit mean) and paid version is expensive at $59/year.


          PS I also found draw.io which has a pretty cool interface and appears to be completely free - yipee! (What is their biz model - how do they survive?). But sadly it doesn't seem to have any way to hide/minimise groups of things. i.e. The grouping is a visual thing only.
          $5 a month for a tool that you say is important to your business is "expensive"?

          C'mon, man.

          It's a tax deductible expense and helps you make more money.

          Kinda tired with all the freebie seeking. If this stuff's so important, you pay for it.
          Signature
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          • Profile picture of the author ship69
            Originally Posted by Jason Kanigan View Post

            $5 a month for a tool that you say is important to your business is "expensive"?

            C'mon, man.

            It's a tax deductible expense and helps you make more money.

            Kinda tired with all the freebie seeking. If this stuff's so important, you pay for it.
            1. The main problem is that I don't use these tools enough to justify $100s. Not yet at least. So they are simply not saving me $100s of dollars. So it would be irrational to pay that sort of money.

            2. Furthermore personally I can't stand the business model whereby you never own anything and you have to keep paying just in order to open & tweak you diagrams. I own my own business. And I like to own what I pay for. I don't want to keep stopping and starting payment plans just to edit documents. Partly it's a lifestyle choice.

            3. What I really want isn't free it's "freemium". My time involved in the learning curve is worth WAY more than the software. Spending time learning anything new is lost time and so lost money. Only once I have got to know, and *love* the software am I prepared to pay for it. Yes once that happens - particularly after a few months of use I am definitely delighted to pay more - yes, a fair bit more.

            4. I trade as an extremely small business. A lot of business software is bloatware that
            a) contains vast numbers of features that I simply do not need and probably never will.
            b) is outrageously expensive (most of the Adobe range comes to mind! 1000s not 100s of dollars.

            5. Learning software *well* is a huge financial investment (my time is worth a lot to me) and as in any financial investment I need to be extremely careful who I 'invest' in. It takes time to work out that:
            a) I like the way a piece of software is written
            b) that there aren't other way better tools that my competitors are using
            c) that there aren't too many bugs
            d) that the developers are responsive & broadly helpful
            e) that there is a good user community
            ...in short that there is no negative catch to really getting to know a tool well. I want a tool that I can share & recommend to my peers. And once they use it we can share tips and tricks.

            Maybe I take my tools too seriously. But it is both part of my competitive advantage and a lifestyle choice. I dont want to be jerked around by learning endless cr*ppy systems.
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  • Profile picture of the author ship69
    Thanks.

    Yes, you can "group" things and then hide the group. Clunky but quite powerful...

    Sadly there is no obvious way to change the order of things i.e. swap links in a chain.

    Nonetheless at first inspection it's AMAZING what it can do. It's a sort of "graph geek purist" 's tool with extremely powerful re-arrangement of the text boxes/shapes.

    It has clearly been designed by computer scientists not graphic designers, because it tends to generate extremely ugly diagrams! The UI is horribly clunky too, with lots of obvious modern ways of working not being possible. So the learning curve is painful...

    Interesting product though.
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  • Profile picture of the author ship69
    P.S. FWIW, I just discovered that draw.io has things called 'Containers' that can contain text-filled shapes and their arrows etc and yet also be collapsed.

    (e.g. BPMN General has both "Pool" and "Lane").

    Interestingly you can also make Groups of shapes and then make those shapes collapse (Arrange > Navigation > Collapsible). However if you link to that group you can get rather unpredictable/unwanted connections...
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    • Profile picture of the author ship69
      The other problem with draw.io (Flow Chart Maker & Online Diagram Software) is that all its default sizes are pretty unhelpful if you want to print anything remotely complicated to A4. And so one very quickly runs out of space. Worse still, when you select all and re-size, all the shapes, the text fails to re-size and this has to be done separately by guessing what will look good. It's also still a little bit clunky / buggy. (e.g. F2 to edit text sometimes causes very strange things to happen - like shooting to the top of the screen for no reason).

      On the upside their technical support are lightning fast to respond, however sadly they are arrogant enough to ban users who are genuinely trying to offer constructive feedback! Do not invest any significant time with draw.io.

      Can anyone suggest anything better?
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