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Anyone who wants professional quality
illustrations in their documents but can't justify the
investment of time and money on a high powered graphics
program could be in luck. SmartDraw (no relation to Colin
Messitt's Smart series) may be what you are looking for.
It's an easy-to-use Windows-based drawing program especially
designed for creating business diagrams, flow charts,
custom maps, signs and the like. The program comes with
libraries of ready-made symbols and shapes, plus a variety
of configurable textual backgrounds and other effects.
In the registered version, there is a 100-page printed
manual with over 100 clip art examples and templates.
The author claims you don't need to be an artist to get
high-class results, and that's borne out in practice.
You begin by selecting a suitable background, adjusting
colours as required (transparent backgrounds are also
available) and then drag and drop shapes or other objects
on to this, connecting them with lines also selected from
the storehouse. You can add text anywhere in any installed
font, size, or colour, with your shapes expanding automatically
to accommodate it. You can also resize, move and recolour
objects together, or one at a time, with any connecting
lines automatically adjusting to your layout.
All this is straightforward, and if you're used to more
traditional drawing programs you'll be surprised at how
quickly SmartDraw lets you put together your diagrams.
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