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Subject:Visio and Frame for Flow Charting From:"THOMAS A. JOHNSON" <am312 -at- TRAVERSE -dot- LIB -dot- MI -dot- US> Date:Fri, 11 Oct 1996 08:51:24 -0400
Brenda asked if there was a good flow charting package available. I use
Visio exclusively for those projects and it works quite well. If you
export Visio drawings to Windows Metafiles (WMF) and import the WMF by
reference, your Frame documents will update automatically.
One person suggested allCLEAR. We are evaluating a copy of that software
in our office and it really takes a programming thought process to make
the program work well. With Visio, if you can sketch what you want the
flow chart to look like, you can use Visio to create it. In my opinion,
allCLEAR forces you to verbalize how you want the image to look which
really seems like an unnecessary step. If you want to draw a picture of a
tree, does it make sense to describe, in words, the trunk and each branch,
or would you rather sketch it out and be done with it.
OTOH, I am impressed with allCLEAR's (please excuse the posessive
trademark) performance in terms of laying the flow chart in a neat and
orderly grid. With Visio or any other drawing package, it takes some
effort to lay it out neatly. Visio does have sticky arrows and connectors
that let you move a box and the arrows stay connected.
Thomas Johnson
am312 -at- traverse -dot- lib -dot- mi -dot- us
