Flowchart / workflow tools

[corriela]

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

[Thom Hayes]

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!

[theresea39477652]

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.

[es73]

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...

[rtinfow]

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]

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!😊

[Leah242417451q4y]

Lucid (Lucid Chart and Lucid Spark)

[Greg_12]

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!

[in8warren]

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

[in8warren]

I'm also surprised to see no recommendations for Visio. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Visio or CorelDRAW...