ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0 raises the bar for mindmapping software

By Chuck Frey

ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0 from CS Odessa offers entrepreneurs and innovators a powerful, easy-to-use set of tools for presenting your ideas visually. Its polished, well-designed interface includes everything you'd expect from a leading-edge mindmapping program -- plus some innovative features that set it apart from other software programs in this genre.

Tools streamline common tasks

To meet the diverse needs of business users and individuals with a range of comfort levels with mindmapping, CS Odessa has thoughtfully integrated several helpful "assistants" into ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0:

The "Mindmap Assistant" is a great tool for helping you to define and build the basic stucture and style of your mindmap. First, this multi-step dialog box asks you to enter the main theme and select a supporting image for your mindmap. Next, you type in the supporting ideas that surround your main theme and the select the style of "branches" or connectors that will link your ideas together. ConceptDraw MINDMAP then generates this "starter map" for you, based on the information you provided. First-time users and people who aren't entirely comfortable with mindmapping should really appreciate this helpful feature.

Brainstorming Mode: At any time during the development of your mindmap, you can enter ConceptDraw MINDMAP's "brainstorming mode" -- a pop-up text window that allows you to quickly record your ideas in an outline-like interface. The brainstorming mode is designed to streamline the process of recording ideas as text, without worrying about how to present them visually within your map. A toolbar at the top of this dialog box contains buttons that enable you to promote or demote ideas within your list of ideas, move them up and down the list and more. This no-nonsense "idea pad" is ideal for group brainstorming sessions, and enables the team to capture ideas quickly and easily. The brainstorming mode even offers a timer -- very useful if you want to limit a team to a certain amount of time for generating and recording ideas. You can save the resulting outline as a separate file, for export and further refinement in a word processing program. When you exit brainstorming mode, ConceptDraw MINDMAP automatically adds your list of ideas to your mindmap.

The Branch Wizard: To add branches to your mindmap, ConceptDraw MINDMAP offers a "Branch Wizard," a dialog box that enables you to quickly enter the text of a subtopic to the active level of your map. You can also use this wizard to delete a subtopic, and to move up and down through different levels of your mindmap -- all in a convenient text-based dialog box. You can also add branches to your map using an "Add Branch" toolbar button.

Other productivity-enhancing features include the ability to create and save document templates for commonly-used types of visual diagrams. You can also use a "workspace" command to save the current settings of any open documents, libraries and the positions of open windows, so you can resume your work quickly, picking up right where you left off.

Manipulating branches is a breeze

ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0 offers a full set of options for manipulating branches. You can easily resize or reposition a topic and its connector by dragging and dropping it to a new location within your map.

You can also use connectors to "glue" a branch to the connection points of other branches. This means that you can combine both plain text branches and symbols or shapes connected to these branches, all within a single mindmap. It's good to see a mindmapping program that supports both of these popular methods of mindmapping.

The program also gives you numerous types of connectors to choose from -- a bigger selection than I've seen in other mindmapping programs.

Branches can be sorted by a number of criteria, including priority, name (ascending and descending) or number. This can be a very useful feature for certain types of mindmaps -- such as priority or to-do lists -- and is unique to ConceptDraw MINDMAP!

Many options for customizing your topics

Topics and subtopics can be easily customized by attaching colorful symbols to them. ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0 offers more than 40 symbol libraries containing 1300 pre-drawn objects. You can edit and add objects in existing libraries, and you can also create your own symbol libraries.

Like most mindmapping programs, ConceptDraw MINDMAP enables you to add notes to any topic or subtopic of your map. A subtopic with an attached note is designated by a small, square symbol containing the letter "T." What's very cool is if you hover your mouse pointer over one of these note symbols, the content of that note will be displayed in a pop-up tool tips window.

Branches and objects can have embedded links to external files or documents, other ConceptDraw files or Web pages.

Global options for your mindmap can be easily set and changed using a convenient "format map" command. From this single dialog box, you can change the shape, color and width of connector lines and text attributes of your ideas. Centralizing all of these map style settings in one dialog box is a real time-saver!

Tools for precise drawing

Because ConceptDraw MINDMAP is based on CS Odessa's ConceptDraw vector drawing program (which competes with the likes of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw), it offers a number of precise drawing and image manipulation capabilities that you won't find in other mindmapping software programs. For example, you can take the text within an object and rotate or reposition it within the symbol as needed. The program also offers tools such as an adjustable grid to which objects can be "snapped," guidelines for aligning objects and support for rulers with different units of measurement. These helpful drawing capabilities enable you to further customize your mindmaps in ways that aren't possible with other mindmapping programs.

Output options are plentiful

ConceptDraw MINDMAP 2.0 offers with a full set of options for outputting your mindmaps. You can shrink a map to fit on a single page, print it to a desired scale, or tile it over several pages. You can also e-mail your completed mindmap to others directly from the program -- very convenient for idea sharing.

You can also export your map to an HTML format, to share with others on a Web site or intranet. All links are preserved during the export process.

Other unique features

CS Odessa claims that ConceptDraw MINDMAP is the only mindmapping program that can create documents and symbol libraries that can he easily interchanged between Windows and Macintosh users.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP offers another unique feature: The ability to store and utilize multiple pages of mindmaps within a single file. This capability functions much like Microsoft Excel; the pages are displayed as a series of horizontal tabs across the bottom of the screen, always easily available at the click of a mouse.

You can also insert a legend -- a small table that displays each symbol you've used in your mindmap and what it means -- into your mindmap. This is another unique and very helpful feature. Why? Because symbols viewed out of context may be meaningless. In other words, you know what you wanted them to convey when you inserted them into your map, but the meaning you intended may be lost on other people viewing your map.

Finally, you can export a list of tasks from Microsoft Outlook, import them into ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0, and create a mindmap from them. During this import process, you can filter your tasks based on begin date, due date and priority - which gives you a high level of control over which tasks you import into the program. When you mouse over an Outlook task in ConceptDraw MINDMAP, a tool tip window pops up to display the details of that task, which the program has imported into an attached text note. Very cool!

Conclusion

In closing, there is much to like about ConceptDraw MINDMAP Professional 2.0. If you haven't used a mindmapping program at all, and feel intimidated by the prospect of doing so, then this is an ideal program for you. Even if you have used other mindmapping programs, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with ConceptDraw MINDMAP 2.0's extensive capabilities, and the high level of control it gives you over every aspect of your visual diagrams.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP 2.0 Professional costs $149, and is available for download from the CS Odessa Web site. A scaled down standard version is also available for $99. In addition, you can download demos of both versions of the program - with saving of files disabled. I strongly encourage you to take a look at what this worthy mindmapping software has to offer.

Published on 1/16/2003

Rating:
Summary This is a very impressive, must-see mindmapping program that offers many innovative, productivity-enhancing features!
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