Participant

Question

Flowchart / workflow tools

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
April 21, 2010
14 replies
87801 views

I have been waiting with every new release for Flowchart / process flow tools in any of the Adobe programs.

I have tried building them in Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign and Fireworks but none of them seem to have connectors which stay 'connected' to the boxes when I move them!

Features needed:
- magnetic connectors (like freehand/omnigraffle)
- switch line style of the flowchart (direct, corners, bezier)
- draw bridges (halfcircles) where connection lines intersects for better reading.
- ability to 'snap' connectors to any point around an object, not just its ancor points.

Nearest thing I can find is the 'line connector' in Fireworks, but again, if I move the box the connector doesn't go with it.

This is such a fundamental part of GUI design I can't believe it doesn't exist.

I've looked at non-Adobe programs like Visio, Omnigraffle, ConceptDraw and Mindmap etc etc but really want to make the most of the interactivity between the Adobe programs I already use.

Any help please?????????

Thanks

Feature request

L

Leah242417451q4y

Participant

Lucid (Lucid Chart and Lucid Spark)

G

Greg_12

Participant

Second Leah's recommendation for Lucid Chart. I was looking for a quick way to draw up a digital version of a hand-drawn flowchart I made and thought Illustrator would be a good starting point - came to this thread looking for answers. I've been using Lucid Chart for about 10 minutes now and it's exactly what I was looking for. It's a free, browser-based tool with easy drag-and-drop interface and sticky arrows. It's super easy to work with and I am getting the impression that it is very good, well-designed software. Adobe honestly shouldn't even try because Lucid Chart is already so good. Thanks Leah!

I

in8warren

Participating Frequently

I can't believe how old this thread is and still nothing, thanks for the recommendation Greg.

R

rtinfow

Known Participant

What's the big deal? Create a symbol library. Much more precise to use the Illustrator bezier tool than the connector tool in Lucid Charts, for example.

Silly-V

Legend

The big deal is sticky arrows! A chart is 75% useless if you have to spend a lot of time moving it around. Because if it's a pain to move it, you don't wanna change it, and one may become stuck making very big decisions based on very small problems that are actually big problems when they decide big decisions.
Using a bezier arrow is possible, same way we don't really need to use Ai to draw; we can simply use MS Paint and hey it's got awesome precise pixels - just place place place - ultimate control!😊

es73

Participant

Who remembers GoLive? That used to have an excellent flow chart tool for mapping out a website. For those who don't remember - that was Adobe's first offering of a IDE, that eventually was retired in favour of Dreamweaver after MacroMedia was bought.

I can't say that I fondly remember a lot of the other features of GoLive though...

theresea39477652

Participant

This seems like a no-brainer. Please deliver on all our requests, adobe! Would be huge for visualizations to clients, getting their feedback in more meaningful ways, and make my design side streamlined.

T

Thom Hayes

Inspiring

Would love this. Having to look at separate paid-for apps, when the whole point of Adobe CC was that it had all the tools necessary.

I'm not 100% sure illustrator is the right tool to add this too, personally. Having that kind of creative freedom would be awesome, but for me I want to be able to animate the diagrams too, turning them into files i can imbed into presentations.

Powerpoint does it, but yeah, I'm not touching that with a bargepole. Need a creative tool not a clunky 90's throwback!

karneig

Participant

So about this plug in, let's designer it!

R

richhone0069

Participant

Adobe You would immediately gain the product loyalty of designers who have to go outside and use other applications.. who also give Adobe a bad grade when they have to complain about why they create everything in Adobe except things that need connectors. Just saying, connectors are not a huge programmatic deal, even if it comes in rough with drag handles and user chosen end points.. just do it

Monika Gause

Community Expert

richhone0069 schrieb
Adobe You would immediately gain the product loyalty of designers who have to go outside and use other applications.. who also give Adobe a bad grade when they have to complain about why they create everything in Adobe except things that need connectors. Just saying, connectors are not a huge programmatic deal, even if it comes in rough with drag handles and user chosen end points.. just do it

Please post this here or add your vote (in case it alredy exists):

http://illustrator.uservoice.com

heavypen

Participating Frequently

I worked my way through college producing hand drawn flow charts and simple diagrams - ink on vellum and frosted mylar with bits of phototypeset and PMTs. Makes me laugh just thinking about it. I was so thankful to switch to Illustrator 1.0 - on a Mac. That little screen was so ridiculously small - but it made diagramming so easy. I could convert complex illustrations with callouts (btw, back then Illustrator had magnetic connectors and jumpers). I was so disappointed that Illustrator lost many of those diagramming features in later revs.

Career wise, I've long since moved on, but I still have to produce flowcharts. Today I use OpenOffice - but it's a cumbersome tool. And other software - can't export images, or if you can you have to convert the image or resize it then export it again so that you can copy and paste into In-design for publishing.

Adobe should think of workflows, not just markets. Adding flowchart functions could have a huge positive impact on productivity. Better productivity enhances value (both perceived and actual) of a software family.

Example - Microsoft: why keep "Notepad" then add "OneNote" when you already have "Word"? The last product penetration report shows that all three are on the list of "primary drivers" when existing customers ask "why did you chose Word over other wp products." There ARE better wp products out there - but none of them have "Notepad" "OneNote" and a handy "Excel" spreadsheet crossover. Want to talk about individual Word/Excel functions that they COULD have left to other software? Workflow is gold in the kingdom of Productivity.

Add native flowchart capabilities. Seriously. And I'll be a Adobe CC customer for the rest of my mortal life.

LoisReed

Participating Frequently

The most frustrating thing is that I found the perfect flowchart maker in MUSE but there is NO WAY to export it. I spent an hour with support and they had no clue what I wanted.

ADOBE, are you listening to us.

I have a 100 page website that I need to organize before I even begin to design. I have been doing this for 18 years and have my workflow so I don't want to be forced into MUSE, but I do want this feature.

We all pay you monthly, please deliver, as we designer must deliver.

D

dougm46304487

Participant

I 100% agree that this is a miss on Adobe's part. Flowcharting, Journey mapping, mind mapping are integral to the design process for UX/UI work. Often times UX Designers need to undertake some of these information architecture responsibilities on their own before they can get started mockup up screens. It makes perfect sense for Adobe to include an app purpose built for this in CC. Give it team collaboration features for bonus points!

B

bobbied61778552

Participant

Lucid Charts is really helpful and you can use some of the functions for free!

gabriel13anderson

Participant

Still no intuitive flowchart options for Adobe CC? Im trying to stay in house if possible.

John Mensinger

Community Expert

I don't have any inside information, but I wouldn't expect dedicated flow chart functions in Illustrator any time soon.

There are plenty of very good tools already available for flow diagramming. There is no business case for Adobe to undertake the addition of an entire specialized tool set to an already-plump application, when the majority of its user base isn't interested, or has already adopted a different workflow for such things. Look at Illustrator's graphing features; do you think they compete well with spreadsheet apps or dedicated graphic solutions? The only reason for Adobe to add a feature set to enable something Illustrator currently doesn't do at all would be to attract new market share, but there just isn't the headroom to add a complete and competitive set of tools.

Microsoft Office And Open Office already do flow charts quite well. Even the free yEd - Graph Editor would be a stout competitor to Illustrator flow charts.

T

tayzano

Participating Frequently

I disagree that OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are a good alternative, as one may want to make much more appealing nodes and lines and may need all the advanced features of a good vector drawing application. And by the way, Inkscape has flow chart tools and they're very useful.

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded