Smartdraw like function in Visio

[rappel]

A friend recently asked me if there was another tool out there other than smartdraw to make up simple drawings easily. I suggested that he look at Visio, but as is often the case I ended up in a long discussion with him on the topic.
I've used Visio for years, but I am not really a power user. However I am comfortable with more advanced techniques for aligning boxes quickly, applying formatting across multiple objects etc. Clearly from the discussion my friend was not and like many people has little interest in spending time learning as he needs to spend time on his business. Whether or not you think this is a false economy (I do), he and many others I suspect look for something that will do 90-95% of what they want.
He was attracted to Smartdraw because with the panel interface to control some of the smarter things that the shapes can do and the numerous business templates that cover most of what he wants it looks as if he can get something that makes diagramming easy with shall we say easy high end polish in terms of shading 3d effects etc.

Now I'm sure that Visio is capable of these sorts of things but in my limited experience only if you take a lot of time or find a developer to do it, or indeed find somewhere like Visio Guy where a lot of really interesting and useful stuff is freely given away. For example the demo of the workflow diagram on their website I could see being done with something liek the divided box on here plus some logic to automatically create the lines between and autoarrange the boxes. The cute bit is the panel interface in this instance to control the shapes on the sheet.

Does any 3rd party have an addon for Visio that gives some of these capabilites and templates that smartdraw has?

... or am I being really dumb and it's in the main product somewhere?

[Paul Herber]

Depends on what you want. I can't see much in the list of SmartDraw diagrams that Visio can't do (there are a few very out-of-date diagram styles that Visio has now dropped), but there are plenty that Visio can do that SmartDraw does not include. And I think you'll find Visio is a bit more extendable.

[wapperdude]

I haven't used Smartdraw, but, based upon their demo / sales pitch video, I would venture the following observation.  Overall, Visio can do a lot more.  BTW, there is an auto connect function, which I believed showed up in V2007.

Like Paul, it depends upon what you're trying to do.  I'd say Smartdraw probably integrates easier with some of the Office products (Powerpoint) and MS Project.  Another strong point is the integration/interaction of Gantt Charts / timelines / mindmaps.  Actually, that seemed pretty cool.  Overall, Smartdraw seemed focused on business planning / strategy / presentations.

The demo was very well done, though.  Give'em an "A" for that.

[Paul Herber]

Also, Visio has its internal programming facility with macros written in VBA (or just created from your mouse clicks), an API for 3rd-party addons. I don't see any of that mentioned for SmartDraw. For SmartDraw I also see many duplicate items in their list of drawing types.

[rappel]

Thanks for the replies.

What he wanted to know was whether an alternative (Visio in this discussion) can do the same things and more out of the box but fundamentally he was looking for cheaper because the base smartdraw is more expensive than Visio home or whatever it's called these days.

I haven't studied Smartdraw but I suspect under the covers it must have similar constructs to visio to enable it to do those things in the demo (which is impressive). However Visio would be more than powerful enough for what he wanted IF it could do the quick drawing, charting etc without him having to actually use Visio as a drawing tool if you see what I mean. He is actually after something that will take care of the alignment of boxes and lines in 90% of the cases, something that will take care of the presentation graphic style colour textures and shades across the whole diagram in one hit, something that gives him less work to do to create the thing in the first place.

He is a business person, not someone with a lot of patience to learn how to drive Visio to a technical leve where he could create the automation for himself.

He was also after timelines, simple gant charts, bar graphs etc. Interestingly when I showed him what Visio can do in those areas, because he needed to interact with the shape itself, rather than a "control panel" he got a minor mental block that it looked too technical. He had the Smartdraw trial on his PC and I can understand what he meant and I guess it depends on how much you would like the tool to spoon feed you. In his case a lot.


Soooo... The question really is does this type of extension to Visio already exist anywhere, not can it be created.

[wapperdude]

Others may want to chime in, but, to the level of pre-defined drawing automation that your friend is seeking, I'd say Visio is not the answer.  Visio will not do the automation of Mind map to Gantt chart to timeline that Smartdraw does.  Visio also doesn't do those Power Point features.  The autoconnect feature has many options, and will do essentially what Smartdraw does, but it may take a "tweak" to the grid setting.  But overall, I'd say Visio doesn't give the "point-n-click" simplicity and the level of "integration" that your friend desires.