Review: ConceptDraw V Professional

ConceptDraw V Professional, $299
CS-Odessa
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/

There are a batch of drawing programs out there (and not all of them come from Microsoft). Over the weekend I took a look at ConceptDraw Professional, which appears to owe quite a bit in conception to Visio. The basic concept is the same: you've got various palettes full of shapes that you can drag to a drawing surface, properties that control the way that the shapes look and behave, and connectors that can hook the shapes together. And of course as you drag the shapes around, the connectors stay hooked up. If you've ever used Visio, you'll be able to get up and running with ConceptDraw in very little time.

There are, naturally, differences between the two applications. While CS-Odessa may have been originally influenced by Visio, they've gone their own way on some things, and some of the divergences are definitely improvements. I'm really quite fond of the docked editing tools on the right-hand side of the screen, which give easy access to all of the properties of the current shape; they seem to me to be easier to work with than Visio's mix of toolbar buttons, menu items, and dialog boxes. ConceptDraw also offers a good selection of basic drawing shapes on its various templates, as well as enough clip art to get you started. The Professional version that I worked with covers web and Windows design, floor plans, organization charts, various types of software diagrams, forms, mechanical engineering, and other odds and ends. They have other editions with specialized content for such areas as mind-mapping, project management, or medical illustration.

ConceptDraw offers a good set of choices for import (including PowerPoint and Visio XML) and export (including HTML, PDF, Flash, and EPS), as well as a Visio converter. They've also got their own documented XML format, as well as support for ODBC database connectivity. Programmability is via ConceptDraw Basic, which allows scripting on various levels from the shape to the full application. The script editor is pretty primitive - lacking even color-coding - but the language does provide object-oriented access to the entire application. There's also a version available for the Mac, which I didn't test, but they say it's completely compatible with the PC version.

So, is it worth considering ConceptDraw instead of Visio? Well, with Visio 2003 Pro listing for $499 (and selling for around $425 street price for legitimate copies), the pricing is certainly attractive. You don't get some of the more advanced programmability and integration features of Visio in ConceptDraw, of course; if you're looking for something that integrates tightly with Office and Visual Studio, you'll want to stick with the Microsoft product. But if your interest is in a standalone diagramming product that's easy to use and can turn out attractive charts, it looks to me like ConceptDraw can do just as good a job.

  Click for larger screenshot

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.