Re: Visio vs. ABC Flowchart
Date: 1997/07/18
Message-ID: <33CF6170.B4F_at_edwardjones.com>#1/1
Sundial Services wrote:
>
> In article <01bc86e5$194730e0$83df020a_at_wchan1> "Walton Chan" <wchan1_at_rci.rogers.com> writes:
>
> >Anyone has ideas on the comparison between Visio vs. ABC Flowchart
> >products? I am looking at these products from a data mapping point of view.
> >Anyone can help?
>
> I don't know ABC Flowchart but I sure do know Visio. I previously tried
> CorelFlow -- for about a week -- then bought Visio and stopped looking further.
>
> It's a program that was obviously built by people who draw charts. :-) It's
> so darned easy to use that it'll fool you.
My experiences with ABC Flowcharter for data mapping have been less than pleasant. I had to use it for a client last year. Granted, I didn't take the time to learn the package inside out, but I found the drawing functions very tedious compared to Visio's drag and drop interface.
One thing that ABC Flowcharter does provide is the ability to annotate the pictures on another page. Visio has no indexing or reporting capabilities, so you have to maintain a separte data dictionary. That said, Flowcharter's is so cumbersome to use, that I ended up maintaining a separate data dictionary, anyway.
Another nice feature in Visio is the ability to create your own templates and drawing objects. Flowcharter gives you some of this, but it's not nearly as flexible as Visio. If you want to dig in and write some code, you can program Visio objects to do just about anything.
In short I agree: it's no contest. Get Visio.
Eric Buckley
Comsys Millenium Services
eMail: remove NoSpam from above
Standard disclaimer - I speak for myself and nobody else. Received on Fri Jul 18 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST