Creating flowcharts in FrameMaker 11

[Guest]

Where are the tools to create flowcharts in FrameMaker11?  I have just upgraded, and for the life of me, I cannot find the flowcharting tools. 

Ravinder

[Arnis Gubins]

It should be under the Help > Clip Art... and then open the Flowchart.fm file.

[Guest]

Thank you Arnis. 

[Michael314]

Ravinder,

Just noticed this thread.

I recommend using Visio for flowcharts and any technical drawings. The Framemaker drawing tools (at least what I have in Frame 7.2) are clunky, tedious to use, and of limited versatility. I've been using Visio since 1995 and it's a superior tool.

In Visio, you drag predefined shapes (there are libraries of hundreds of shapes) onto a drawing space and can quickly link them into a flowchart. For each shape you can quickly define its line thickness, line color, line type, fill color or pattern, text, and text attributes. You can even save customized shapes for reuse. Draw the flowchart to scale for your page width and insert it at 100%.

I would say a flowchart would take 5-10 times longer in Frame than in Visio.

You can be more productive -- use the right tool. (See sample below)

Yours,

Michael F

[Guest]

Thank you Arnis, Micheal. 

I have used Viso extensively  for creating flowcharts etc, and agree it is a great tool.  However I wanted to try FramMaker 11 flowcharting tools to see if they had changed. I have not had a chance to look at the FrameMaker 11 flowcharting tools yet, but will do so as soon as I get a few hours of free time.

[Arnis Gubins]

Ravinder,

FYI, there are no native specific flowcharting "tools" in FM. FM has some old flowchart figures drawn with the limited drawing primitives. You can reshape/rsize these and position them as a grouped object. But that's about it.

[Guest]

Hello Arnis,

Thank you for your feedback. I guess I was hoping that Frame would have a better way of handling the flowcharts etc.

[Bob_Niland]

> Draw the [Visio] flowchart to scale for your page width and insert it at 100%.

Inserted how? I doubt FM supports the native proprietary Visio formats. Using OLE has multiple hazards. I couldn't guess what simple copy and paste does. Does it come in as vector & text, or just a raster copy?

Visio supports export to several vector formats, including SVG, DWG and DXF (but not EPS, and whether you can get vector PDF is unclear). Importing from those might preserve the text, and the vector data structures. It might also provide an alternative archive format for later stewards or other users who don't have Visio.

FM illustration tools have always been primitive, and I'll be pleasantly surprised if they've been upgraded for FM10 or 10. Somehow I doubt it. Merely bundling some ancient clip art including flowchart fragments does not a flowchart tool make.

But the major embarassment for FM art tools is how weak they are for the primary target use of FM: technical documentation. No magnetic callout leaders (with auto-orthogonality please). No optional halo masking for same. No integrated auto-centered text for the callout number. We've had to create all these (to the extent possible).

And yes, the tool rule is: use whatever is the most effective, but keep an eye on maintenance. We use Pro-E, Acad, Ai and Ps to master imagery, but always make sure we store at least one copy in some sort of interchange format. Proprietary file formats eventually become tombs for your data.

[Michael314]

Error,

You are so nit picky.

I was not going to launch into a procedure about how to transfer a drawing from Visio to Frame. My point was that Visio is a much more preferrable solution to Frame for technical drawings. And yes, you can cut and paste from Visio to an anchored frame using Paste ->Special and selecting a format like WMF, or you can save the Visio file in some output type and import it into Frame so you have a link to tell you where it came from.

As far as long term maintenance of graphics and content, I haven't worked on any product manuals that have survived as long as some of the tools I use. Products change, functionality changes, user interfaces change, so most of the manuals I work on need a lot of rework, and in some cases, need to be created anew. 

Yours,

Michael F

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[Guest]

Hello Michael314,

I have used both methods of transfering from Visio, and it has sufficed.  I wanted to see if with the new releases of FrameMaker11, there was a better way of handling the flowcharts. 

I have been on projects where we have had to tweak flowcharts over number of years, and using Visio is ok most of the time.  It become tedious when you have 60 to 70 flowcharts that need to be updated every year and in some cases a couple of times a year as it can take a fair amount of time. 

Ah well I hope FramMaker folks will look into it at some point.

[Bob_Niland]

> My point was that Visio is a much more preferrable solution to Frame for technical drawings.

Almost anything is, but most authors need to be mindful of portability and supportability when they use external tools. Visio may well be the most efficient tool for flow charts.

> ... I haven't worked on any product manuals that have survived as long as some of the tools I use.

You're lucky. I'm the steward for nearly 40 years worth of manuals, one of the oldest of which needed updating lately, and that's insufficiently rare here.

We don't have source for a lot of that stuff, or do, but it's in ancient and/or orphaned formats, some of which are only accidentally portable, or require serial open/export from two separate apps (one itself orphaned) to get to something portable.

We also have many manuals translated, not all by the same service. If the imported objects contain text, it eases the translation effort if the translators can edit the original art instead of having to buy an app, or re-create the art, or hack an intermediate form.