PsL Monthly 1993 December/PSL Monthly Shareware CD-ROM (December 1993).iso/reviews/gr_03

Text File | 1993-10-01 | 10.0 KB | 232 lines

GR-03:  Business Graphics, Organization Charts


Adkins Graphics System
   Adkins Enterprises
   $50
   #7522/3447 [2 disks]
is a collection of programs that allow you to develop and maintain graphics
charts. You can create several types of charts including Pareto, Line, Bar,
and Time Line. Requires a hard drive.


CGA Screen Designer
   Coughlan, Gene
   $15
   #3044
is a data graphing program with many drawing functions included. The eight
graph types include three-dimensional bar graphs and pie charts. Drawing
functions include text insertion, line, box, and circle drawing, and numeric
keypad driven drawing and erasing. Slide shows can be produced, and you can
create macros to automate the use of the program. You can choose either wide
or narrow characters, and printing can be done on either 9-pin or 24-pin dot
matrix printers. Also included is an ASCII text editor which will let you
embed pictures into printed output, create banners, and create or edit simple
ASCII files of up to 1,600 lines.


DOCA
   GoldPax Software
   $35
   #1654
is a drawing program designed to allow creation of flowcharts, organization
charts, etc, without the need for a graphics adapter. MS Mouse and PS/2 Mouse
are supported but not required. Line drawing is evidently not meant to be used
for anything more complicated than connecting boxes. If you want a line to
turn a corner, for example, you have to go through a menu that lets you select
the corner character and then back through the menu to select the
straight-line character again. Fortunately, most of the figures you would need
for flowcharts and org charts are pre-drawn for you. We found the program to
be easy to use and to work as advertised.


EGA Screen Designer
   Coughlan, Gene
   $15
   #3448
lets you create eight different graph styles from data your input. You
can draw your own pictures using graphics primitives such as lines, circles,
and boxes. Text can be inserted anywhere on the screen, and an ASCII text
editor is also included. Pictures and graphs can be saved to disk for future
editing, or can be printed on any Epson or compatible printer. A slide show
feature lets you present graphics in any sequence. 448K is required.


Charts Unlimited 2.0
   Graphware, Inc.
   $45
   #7192/1573
is a graphics program with a user interface similar to Lotus 1-2-3, a blessing
for those who think that pressing E to erase is more efficient than moving the
cursor to a picture of a trash can.  Charts are drawn on a large worksheet
that is 256 columns wide up to 1000 rows long.  Just as the screen in 1-2-3 is
a window on a much larger spreadsheet, the screen in CU is window on a large
graphics worksheet, but in CU, the worksheet can be shrunk so that you can
view all of it at once.

Thirty-six Objects, including various geometric shapes and bar graph designs,
can be displayed, moved, stretched, shrunk and replicated on the worksheet.
There are also thirty-six Symbols available, ranging from math symbols to flow
chart arrows. You can also create your own custom symbols. With these objects
and symbols, it is easy to create floorplans, flow charts, organization charts,
electronic circuits designs and more.

Text can be entered anywhere on the worksheet as lowercase, uppercase or bold
face characters and text files from spreadsheets and word processors can be
imported into a CU graphics worksheet.

A chart can be printed on most dot matrix printers either horizontally or
vertically and in many sizes due to a magnification feature that can expand a
chart up to 100 times. A printer buffer is provided to facilitate printing of a
chart while simultaneously creating or editing a chart.

We did not have any problems while actually running CU, but when we exit the
program, we get a "Memory Allocation Error" and have to re-boot the machine.
Still, this is a minor nuisance compared to the value of the program, and we
assume the author will look into it.


FloDraw 2.25
   Freund, George ASP
   $25-$38
   #7192/885 [2 disks]
is a flowchart generating program and symbol-oriented drawing program. The
ease with which it can handle symbols makes it ideal for flowcharts,
organizations charts, system diagrams and more. Automatic generation of arrows
between symbols is also included. It comes with several symbol libraries
including a flowchart symbol library, an HIPO symbol library, and an electric
symbol library. New symbols can be designed, saved, and added to existing
libraries or combined in new libraries.

Other features include two large font sizes for page headings fonts; a selection
of two styles and sizes of arrowheads; a tutorial; and most welcome of all -
additional printer support for the Epson MX/FX/LQ printers, Toshiba P321/341/351
and HP Laserjet Plus/II, support for wide carriage printers, and customized
special characters.

Flodraw files can be converted to standard PCX format, and you can also convert
PCX files to Flodraw format for use in other programs. A library of 3-D
flowchart and computer symbols is included.


Decline Curve
   Cheesman, Dale C. III
   $50
   #1518
is a menu-driven graphics program which automatically plots graphs on your
screen illustrating the rate of decline of oil and gas wells, but which can be
used for tracking other markets, such as stocks.  You can now print from an EGA
or CGA screen to an IBM or Epson compatible printer using the drivers included
in the package.  Several enhancements have been made in the program.


ExpressGraph
   Expressware Corporation ASP
   $49
   #7193/756
probably ranks the highest in its class of any of the Expressware programs.  It
is fast, colorful, feature-filled, and easy to use.  It offers you a choice of
about a dozen different graph formats.


Grapher2
   Stone, Lawrence
   $49
   #7193/2357
is an excellent business graphing program. It will draw bar chart, stacked
column chart, line chart, pie chart, and exploded pie chart in 640 x 200 CGA
resolution. It can draw up to 24 bar charts, 48 pie charts, 24 exploded pie
charts, 2 stacked column charts and 2 line charts for each data table. It will
import SYLK files from programs such as Multiplan and Excel, and DIF files from
programs like 1-2-3. It will save a "snapshot" of graphs to disk. It supports
all dot matrix graphics printers. This is among the easiest to use of any of the
shareware business graphics programs we have tested.


KwikGraf
   Elliott, Alan C. ASP
   $35
   #7193/1788
allows you to print graphic plots, create pie charts, pictograms, bar charts,
histograms and scatterplots.  It works well with dBase.  You can even create a
graph from DOS or from a set of graphs and displays from a command file.


Mind Chart
   Mind Over Matter Systems
   $50
   #7194/1490 [2 disks]
is a menu oriented data charting program that supports the following chart
types:  line, surface, scatter, centered bar, offset bar, step, pie, stacked bar
and Gantt.  Charts may be displayed in any of nine screen windows (up to four at
once).

Features include user-defined scaling, axis parameter options, grid
construction, description positioning, pixel spacing, text size, color and
pattern selection, pattern creation, display mode, pie slice explosion, and bar
width modification. Chart data may be entered directly in row and column format
or imported from ASCII files.

Mind Chart also provides a drawing utility with which the user can enhance
charts, create logos, or produce freehand drawings using the cursor control
keys. In the drawing mode, you can change colors, choose patterns, paint areas,
create arcs, boxes, circles, ellipses, and lines, draw unique figures, change
pixel movement distances, display text, save and recall screen images.

For presentation purposes, Mind Chart provides a slide show feature which
provides for manual or automatic screen display of previously saved charts and
drawings from screen image and sketch files referenced in user constructed
carrousels. Required: 384k, hard disk or 720k+ floppy, CGA, EGA, VGA or
Mono-graphics adapter.


Prontograph
   CSI Design Group
   $15-$30
   #7194/814
is a what we refer to here as a business graphics or data plotting program.  It
draws bar, line, x/y, and pie charts, stacked bar, hi-lo graphs and lets you
select from many different patterns to fill in the bar and pie charts.  Although
the author says that you might not need to first read the on-disk documentation
to run the program, the use of some of the most important features (write &
paint) are not obvious unless you read the docs first.


GraphIt Plus
   KYRAKO Software
   $20
   #3645
creates point, line, bar, stacked bar, and pie charts. The graph picture can be
saved to a PCX file, and text can be added anywhere on the graph. Other features
include easy manipulation of fonts and colors, exploding pie slices, slide show
presentation, support for over 75 printers, and more. Requires 512K, EGA/VGA,
and a hard disk.


Polymaps
   Curtin, Tom
   $39-$88
   #1688
is a complete geo-information system you can use for mapping data by state or
use to create your own geographical maps.  It will output the maps to 640x200
video, Epson compatible printers, or HP plotters.  A wide range of controls is
given over the output format, and Polymaps will plot pie, bar, line, scatter,
and other charts as well.  Polymaps was reviewed in the 9/30/86 issue of PC
Magazine, page 225, when it was a retail-only product selling for $99.  It was
rated as a good value, but difficult to use.  We didn't find it that hard to
use, but documentation is very limited.


Redwood Draw
   Redwood Technology
   $40
   #3450
makes charts and graphs from data stored in ASCII files. (It is not a
drawing program.) It also displays slide shows and cycling shows; makes text
slides or briefing charts; prints on laser and dot matrix printers; fits and
smooths data and optionally creates PCX and TIFF files. The input data files
are straightforward and easy to create. Requires EGA/VGA.

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