This post is brought to you by SmartDraw Software.
Plenty of jobs nowadays involve creating visual aids for clients, bosses and co-workers, from project flowcharts and building schematics to medical diagrams, you name it. But getting a BA typically doesn’t teach digital draftsmanship, which is why apps that make it easy to create compelling, clear graphics and illustrations have become so popular.
SmartDraw is an intuitive, powerful and fun app that’s become a contender against the big legacy software brands. More than half of the Fortune 500 and over 250,000 public and private enterprises of all sizes use SmartDraw now. But until today, SmartDraw has been available only on Windows machines. That changes with the release of SmartDraw Cloud, which lets Mac users get in on the action.
SmartDraw Cloud means Mac users can use this versatile illustration app, with all the functionality of a desktop app and the added flexibility of the cloud.
A streamlined workflow, thousands of time-saving templates and tens of thousands of beautifully rendered symbols, all tied together within a painstakingly designed interface — it’s all there, operating just as responsively and swiftly as any app running locally on your machine.
This is a pretty huge upgrade, the product of six years of work. SmartDraw Cloud ports every feature from the SmartDraw Desktop Business Edition to a cloud-based app that can run on any device. SmartDraw Software has also added support for multiple pages in a single document, totally rebuilt SmartDraw’s Visio import and updated the software’s themes, templates and overall look and feel, among other great additions.
While Microsoft’s Visio, a legacy platform that bears the mark of its ’90s origins, is often found in major institutions with aging computer systems, SmartDraw was built from the ground up with today’s workflow in mind. Not to mention, Visio just doesn’t run on Mac, and now SmartDraw does.
SmartDraw Cloud: The smarter way to draw
It’s worth remembering what set SmartDraw apart in the first place. Whether you’re drawing up a flowchart, org chart or mind map — basically anything that you could conceivably need to illustrate for professional purposes — it’s all available.
Within each category, you have easy access to the basic icons you’ll need for a given project, with a wider library and full customization available if you decide to get fancy. An icon toolbar specific to each project type makes it easy and even a little enjoyable to dial in exactly the image you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPS7iodd5Bo
All that’s been the case since SmartDraw launched. What’s been added are all the functions you’ve come to expect of a cloud-connected productivity platform. Create or change a visual on the go, and it’ll show up across all devices, automatically saved on the cloud. (SmartDraw also integrates with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox.)
Documents are shareable and interactive even with those who don’t have SmartDraw, making it unbelievably easy to collaborate with any colleague building a presentation with you. Plus, though not ideal, it’s really helpful that you can now make adjustments to an illustration on the go via a mobile device.
Another really cool thing about SmartDraw is its vector-based graphics. Usually, graphics are generated via a bitmap, which loses resolution and gets pixelated as you increase its size. Vector graphics operate by a different principle, using angle and line calculations that mean your image remains crisp at any size. This is a feature not often found in cloud-based software, certainly not in any other cloud-based diagramming apps like Lucidchart or Gliffy — SmartDraw Software had to build it into their new platform from the ground up.
The release of SmartDraw Cloud essentially makes all other diagramming platforms as obsolete on Mac as they were on Windows. It’s intuitive, flexible, fun to use and replete with all the advantages of being based in the cloud. There’s really nothing else to ask for. Give SmartDraw Cloud a try and see for yourself why it’s at the top of the chart-making charts.
