Program to make mindmaps, flowcharts, illustrations...

[Annette88]

Hi,

I'm looking for a good program to make mindsmaps, flow diagrams and different illustrations.

I'm writing on my master thesis in chemical engineering, so it has to be used in general writings and in chemical connections...

I've tried some different trials of programs like Edraw, LucidChart etc.... But which one is worth buying?

Thanks in advance!

Annete

 

[KENAT]

I think Visio gets used here - but I'm not a user, for the rare occasion I need it I use my trusty CAD or Excel hammers.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[MortenA]

If you ant "all-in-one" i would agree wrt Visio. I ostly use Visio for small schetches

For mindmaps i use a special tool: Mindjet that i feel works better. But thats not myself paying...

 

[Clyde38]

I use "The Brain" and it works great for me. I think that you can use it for free. Anyway, give it a look.

http://www.thebrain.com/

 

[MartinLe]

Ask yourself how many different tools you want to use, what you need exactly and what you want to spend.

The dedicated mindmap-tools I looked at (kdissert and on other open source thing I forgot the name) allowed fo an easy workflow to create and re-structure text-documents. But they impose some structure on your document and are useless for other drawing puroposes, like PFD or P&ID.

I've seen ISO-compliant P&IDs done in Visio so I assume all the libraries are there. Diag is a free alternative that also has a library for process engineering, but I think it'S ASME, definitly not ISO