ConceptDraw as an alternative to MS Visio for MAC and PC
 

Many are acquainted with such a software product as Visio, which beyond any doubt, is a powerful and multifunctional tool. However, there may occur instances when this program turns incapable of meeting certain users' requirements; and then, the most optimum solution is quite difficult to find. But there is always an alternative. ConceptDraw from CS Odessa Corporation has been developed to satisfy all your needs as an alternative product to Visio.
 

	ConceptDraw		MS Visio

What are the advantages of ConceptDraw over Visio for you to prefer the former to the latter?

Cross-Platform Compatibility

The main advantage, of course, is that ConceptDraw is a cross-platform software. That means it can be run it both on PC, and on Apple Macintosh! Lately many people have faced difficulties with sharing their documents among Mac users. But from now on, you will have such a problem no longer, as using ConceptDraw you will be able to work on Macintosh with a document created on PC. To run Visio on Macintosh you had to install a virtual machine to emulate PC, which made work difficult and slow a great deal. Now many users find ConceptDraw a better analog of Visio for Macintosh. If you prefer working in Macintosh environment, then ConceptDraw is your choice.

Obtainable price

Another factor of no less importance in choosing software is its price. Here ConceptDraw turns more beneficial at the price 240 euro (Noadis price including VAT) for Professional version versus $499 for the similar version of Visio.

Import & Export

Another ConceptDraw peculiarity that is worth stressing upon is export to PDF and PowerPoint formats. Now you can easily design presentations and print your documents.

Numerous of specialized shape libraries

ConceptDraw users, as well as Visio users, have an opportunity to work with numerous external libraries; with their help you can create various documents with no need to search for the necessary elements for your diagrams in other software products.

Built-In Script Language

The next point to be considered is the in-built language in ConceptDraw. It is ConceptDraw Basic. Unlike VBA language used in Visio, ConceptDraw Basic is much simpler to learn and use. You will not need any extra studying to use it, which will save you money.

MS Visio Support

A specific feature of products from CS Odessa Corp. is their intercompatibility. Thus, once created with the help of any other CS Odessa product, your document is fully compatible with ConceptDraw. For instance, at projecting of a network you use MindMap for brainstorming. Your MindMap documents can further be used in ConceptDraw at work in your project.

Import files from Visio

In case you used Visio before and now decided to switch to ConceptDraw, here is another good news for you – ConceptDraw supports import of files from Visio, using XML format. Thus, starting a new product you will not lose your documents created in Visio and you will not have to create them anew. Moving to new software for you will lie in just the following:

Export of your documents from Visio to XML format.

Import of these documents to ConceptDraw.

• To make it a fine ending, we would like to give opinions of some users who have already switched from Visio to ConceptDraw:
• I choose ConceptDraw because it was the closest to Visio on the Mac side. ConceptDraw has all of the features I need and can output as a Visio file if needs to be... - says Kris Rockwell, Hybrid Learning Systems

The main reason I switched is that I moved from a PC to Mac and currently there is no version Visio for Mac. And installing virtual PC etc. etc. was just too much of a hassle... - says Randolph Jacinto

Visio has become quite complicated and it turns out that UML diagrams are easier to create with ConceptDraw. Visio has some strange behavior that, I think, is related to integrating with modeling tools such as Rational, etc. I just want a diagramming software and nothing more! Another reasone is I like the Apple OS X operating system very much. I've been a long-time Window's user (and software developer) and I'm tired of the same old thing, I suppose. In general, the software for Apple platform seems nicer and easier to use... - says Andrew Joseph

The main reason for the switch is my switch from a PC to a Mac computer. I have tried Graffle Pro and found that it wasn't the perfect replacement. I am still playing with the ConceptDraw draw capabilities. One thing that Visio does extremely well ( better than any other diagram product that I have seen) is that you can cut and paste the diagram into a Word.doc and it looks perfect. That is not true of Graffle Pro and quite frankly not really the case with ConceptDraw from what I can tell. ConceptDraw does have some nice templates and useful features. I will continue to use it and evaluate the capabilities. The ability to go back and forth between PC and Mac and Vision and ConceptDraw is an important capability... - says John Latham.PhD, Managing Partner, GENITECT LLC

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Operating Systems:

Macintosh (Mac OS X 10.4 or later)
Windows (7/Vista/XP)

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