When you’re a business or in a field in which chart-based communication using geometric diagrams is one of the most important aspects of your daily work ethics, then a program like Edraw Max is meant just for you. Now Microsoft Visio is a tool that does just that, and you’ve probably used it before, but what differentiates this software is its low asking amount and the abundance of features on offer. What’s more, there are plenty of free features present in its trial version as well. Let us delve deep into its offerings to give you a detailed lowdown on the software.
Edraw Max doesn’t have a steep learning curve at all. If you know what you want to make, you can jump into it and be done with your work in a very short time. That’s the beauty of its simple and intuitive interface. A canvas is laid at the center for you to edit on, and tools are presented on all four sides. Sure enough, any power user would want to create their own diagrams from scratch, but even if you aren’t one of them, the pre-made templates will really come in handy.
This Visio alternative should be lauded for the diverse fields it has covered with its templates. There’s something for everyone here. You get basic pie charts and graphs for regular business presentations, clip arts for educational purposes, flowcharts for scientific or mathematical exhibitions, industrial diagrams, map templates, network diagrams, wireframes and much more. You can click on your preferred category at the start, and select the exact template you want. You can then personalize it to suit your liking.
Let’s say you want to create a floor plan for a swanky new office you are building. All you need to do is select a template that’s closest to the plan you have in mind. Towards the left of your canvas, is a menu containing all the stuff that you’ll need to make this floor plan as detailed as possible. Drop down the office equipment menu to find diagrams for computers, fax machines, scanners, phones and more, or open up the furniture menu to grab a conference table diagram. Everything from doors, windows, plants, staircases and more can be grabbed from the side-menu to be inserted into your floorplan. Alternatively, you can start drawing your desired office diagram from scratch using the same menu.
The top menu is very akin to Microsoft Word, so you’ll find yourself very much at home if you’ve ever used the said program. Options for changing the font and its size appear boldly, and so do other text formatting tools. And then there are menus for changing page layouts, inserting objects and changing viewing settings here. That’s about it when it comes to understanding how the interface works. The rest of the stuff is pretty easy to grab once you start using Edraw Max.
The Visio alternative boasts of a strong import and export system. This basically means you can insert drawings from a large number of file formats into it. PDFs are supported and so are Word documents, PPTs, JPEGs and HTML files. Moreover, you can even import diagrams from Microsoft Visio into it to edit them further. This cross-platform compatibility really is one of the biggest factors that impressed us about the Edraw Max. And you’ll be also pleased to know that it features cloud integration, meaning your projects will be available for viewing and editing on any device you log into.
Edraw Max is sold under various price tiers. A $99 yearly subscription is available, which costs you around $8.25 per month. Then there’s a $179 perpetual license that guarantees three years of upgrades, and a $245 lifetime license, which provides lifetime updates. Multi-user deals for enterprise customers are also offered, along with academic licenses for students. And yes, there is indeed a free trial version that can be downloaded through its official website. You can download it right now for Windows, Mac and Linux machines.
