CNET Editors' review If you've ever drawn a circle around an idea and then linked it to a bunch of other circles with related ideas, you've created a mind map, which is actually a catch-all term for a wide range of diagrams, charts, and graphical representations that you can use to conceptualize everything from a dinner party to a billion-dollar project. Edraw Mind Map's templates and examples make it easy to create high-quality mind maps and similar diagrams suitable for any use. It's free for noncommercial and home users. Edraw Mind Map's interface takes its visual clues from Office rather than the Explorer-style layout that is typical of modern graphics app, and it gives Edraw a familiar feel. We could quickly change the layout's color via the Style button. The main window displayed a Getting Started page with all the available templates categorized under Mind Map, Clip Art, and More Templates. The free version provides one Template, a Mind Mapping Diagram, but many Examples to go with it, including Decision Making, Life Planner, Marketing Strategy, and even PEST Analysis. We could also choose US, Metric, or Custom units when creating a new map. We chose a Decision Making template, which opened with a finished diagram populated with Process Steps we could click to configure and a left-hand Libraries panel offering a wide variety of Symbols, Mind Shapes, and Clip Art to choose from, plus the ability to add more from our system. We made good use of the Dynamic Help button on the right side of the interface. Holding our cursor over it produced an expanding panel with a detailed explanation of whatever step or process we were dealing with. Edraw has all the little touches of a well-configured tool, such as the spectrally arranged color buttons along the bottom edge for superfast changes. Right-clicking any element in our map brought up a menu configuring everything.
e Mind Maps is a utility that can help you create graphic representations for mind maps, just as its name suggests it. Mindmaps are diagrams that can help you structure, visualize, and classify your ideas. Ultimately, this process also helps you enhance your creative generation of new ideas, by re-arranging words and images around an initial central point. The program is easy to use, since it displays an intuitive user-interface. Within it, you are able to create radial hierarchies and tree structures specific to building mind maps. Afterward, you may highlight their most important elements with specific colors, as well as insert hyperlinks and images, according to your needs and preferences. You are able to selectively hide or display branches, depending on the elements that you are trying to focus on at a certain time. The predefined symbols in the program's gallery are simple-looking, but other, more appropriately complex ones can also be imported. Once you finish working on a project, you are able to save the output in the program's specific format, or alternately, you may export it as text file, bitmap or web page. Furthermore, the program allows you to also print the resulting mind map. To conclude with, this application comes across as highly useful for those who need an accessible tool for memorizing and organizing data, as well as spawning fresh ideas, and enhancing their overall creativity.
Download Now