Flow-charting software?

I think Microsoft Visio is pretty good. I had a bit of trouble with it when starting, but now that I have my "Favorites" shapes all organized, its a breeze.

I don't know how good Visio is for large and complicated flowcharts, but for simple flowcharts its really good and fast. I stopped using paper and pensil, because an error causes you to redraw the flowchart which wastes time.

In addition it has the usual Microsoft look to it and can export/import in many standard formats.

My opinion: it sucks. I like to use large paper (butcher paper or sometimes just 11x17 out of the copier) and a pencil. While sketching flowcharts and deciding the code flow, nobody expects cosmetic perfection. It only needs to look pretty if it's going into a specification, whitepaper or something a suit might read. (In the latter case, it is safe to redact the flowchart into three boxes: START

-> (Patented algorithm) -> END - since they won't understand anything deeper than this).

It's much easier (for me) to sketch with a pencil and then, if necessary for publication, transcribe the final edited result into a piece of software. I HATE maintaining flowcharts electronically.

Actually you can do it in Microsoft Word: Insert | Picture | Autoshapes Flowchart.

Not very elegant, a pain to use and difficult to maintain, but if yo wanted to document a completed design, then most likely it is on you desktop for no extra cost.

-Aubrey Kagan

I've used Visio a lot, & can recommend it.

Another that I used to use was called AllClear, from a company called Clear Soft. It was interesting, in that you write a brief "script" & the program generates a chart based on the end character of each line. I found it very useful, after I got the hang of it, & actually used it to check logic in application designs. I don't know if it's still around or not.

JM

Yeah - any text editor and pseudo-code.

I gave up using flowcharts agout 25 years ago for various reasons: - they don't enforce good structure - they're always out of date (the code gets tweaked, and the flowchart doesn't) - the lack of any real means of generating/maintaining them electronically, i.e. alongside the rest of the project.

I switched to using pseudo-code, i.e. a generalised structured language. Example:

IF button pressed THEN get keypress deal with keypress ENDIF

Eventually I wrote C that was clear enough that it performed both roles and was self-documenting, so I dropped the pseudo-code - but it still gets rolled out for non-technical people's use.

HTH,

Steve

Flowcharts work better (for me) when illustrating complicated nested loops.

It doesn't really matter, either one is just a logical aid in designing software.

I do a lot of contract maintenance and use Visio when I'm learning new code. I especially like that I can insert links to other pages/files of related Visio pages and files as well as to other reference documents.

New code? Pseudocode.

Ken Asbury

FWIW, I find Nassi-Schneiderman diagrams much clearer than flowcharts for such purposes, and they help prevent you from making most of the mistakes flowcharts allow. Google's first hit

does a pretty good job describing them.

Regards,

-=Dave

--
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

ever used flowcharting software that generates the code for you ?

Stef

Freeware:

look for DIA, available on all platforms,

or

my favourite Diagram Designer

I used the latter one to experiment with codegeneration (for JAL, Delphi, PICbsc) from finite state machines. So maybe one day that'll added to Diagram Designer.

Stef Mientki

Edge Diagrammer is alot more user friendly than Visio for flowcharting.

"Scott Kelley" schrieb:

graphviz dot, can be used by doxygen.

Oliver

--
Oliver Betz, Muenchen (oliverbetz.de)

Didn't flowcharts go out in the 80's???

That was the last time I used one - for a uni assignment...

Regards, Mark

If you want something like Visio, rather use SmartDraw.

It can do everything that visio can do (Even load/save visio format), and is a hell of a lot cheaper than Visio. The full version with all libraries goes for US$99.

Regards Anton Erasmus

Can it be set up to snap symbols and lines to a grid?

--
Guy Macon

Yes, And the grid is not slightly different every time one reloads the document after the app had been exited and restarted -- the way it happens in Visio. You can download a fully functional demo to evaluate before you buy.

Regards Anton Erasmus