User:Emeseg/SmartDraw

SmartDraw is a commercial desktop software application for Microsoft Windows produced by SmartDraw.com, a company based in San Diego, CA. SmartDraw was created to facilitate visual communication for business people using automation.

Product Features and Automation
SmartDraw contains 4,000 diagram templates and 28,000 symbols that serve as starting points for 60 diagram categories. These categories include flowcharts, organization charts, Gantt charts, timelines, mind maps, floor plans, among others.

SmartDraw provides automation through SmartPanels that contain single-click shortcuts for common tasks related to specific diagrams like adding and deleting symbols from flowcharts and mind maps, adding structure to organization charts, creating tasks on Gantt charts. Lines and formatting are created automatically.

Starting with SmartDraw 2008, SmartDraw also adopted Microsoft's Fluent user interface, commonly known as the Ribbon.

Business Visuals in Communication
SmartDraw was created to allow business users to communicate visually.

As cited by Paul Martin Lester in a paper called "Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication", psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University School of Law claimed that people remember what they see better.

Visual communication advocates also often cite Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience, although the cone never actually contained the percentages used in later references. This has generated some controversy.

A recent study by the U.S. Federal Government suggested that up to 83% of human learning occurs visually. The study also indicated that information which is communicated visually is retained up to six times greater than information which is communicated by spoken word alone .

Integration and Add-Ons
SmartDraw integrates with Microsoft Office products including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

SmartDraw allows users to animate graphics presented in PowerPoint by revealing portions of the graphics in steps. This technique is called sequencing or animating graphics. Additional PowerPoint integration includes SmartDraw's ability to generate full PowerPoint presentations using a "PowerPoint Storyboard" template ..

SmartDraw also supports importing and exporting project charts into Microsoft Project format.

With the release of SmartDraw 2010 Microsoft SharePoint integration was added, providing an in-product document check-in/check-out interface similar to the ones found in Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Excel 2007.

To create charts, users can import data from Microsoft Excel.

SmartDraw supports building a network diagram automatically from an LDAP data import.

SmartDraw can also capture live data from Google Maps to incorporate regions, counties, zip codes, countries and even satellite images from across the globe into illustrations—-all as separate, editable elements.

Built-in photo-software functionality allows users to import images directly from digital cameras or other sources, crop and scale, adjust color and brightness, and drop them into org charts or any other document.

Awards
SmartDraw has earned numerous awards during its lifetime, including "Most Innovative General Business Software", Best Business Program Ziff-Davis and Best Business Application from PC Magazine.