The best flow chart maker

The top online flow chart maker? We will review the best ones and pick the one that we think is the best.

Over 500 templates and a drag-and-drop shapes library lets you start planning and diagramming easily with Lucidchart—or you can use an automated layout to generate a diagram from preexisting data. Provide clarity to engineers and UX/UI designers, build and share product roadmaps, gather requirements and map dependencies, and more. In my evaluation criteria section, I mention the importance of easy collaboration in the Features & Function notes. Lucidchart excels here, letting you log in and make changes online before sharing it to your team or workgroup. The stand-out presentation features are another way Lucidchart makes it easy to socialize ideas.

Drawing the flowcharts manually will be time and effort consuming. Flowcharts have some limitations like complex logic, alterations, and reproduction. These limitations can be overcome using the right software. Flowchart maker will make the whole process of diagramming easier with the features like resizing of shapes according to text, the auto connection of shapes, intuitive editor, drag-and-drop functionality, predefined templates, collaboration features, and compatibility with other tools.

Business users often don’t work in isolation, and Cacoo by Nulab is a charting solution built to address that need, among others. It’s an online tool that interfaces to a wide range of cloud services, including Google Drive/Docs, Confluence, Adobe Creative Cloud, Box and Dropbox. In addition to Cloud stored and distributed content, Cacoo also works with TypeTalk (another Nulab product) and Slack to enable an information flow that alerts other team members when a diagram is updated. The number of templates might be less than other products, but it has all the critical ones like Network diagrams, organisational charts and floor plans. See extra information on online flowchart creator.

EPC diagrams, or event-driven process chain diagrams, are used to document or plan business processes. This standard was developed within the framework of Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) by August-Wilhelm Scheer. SDL diagrams, or specification and description language diagrams are used to describe specifications of a system. In comparison to UML, SDL diagrams deal with the detailed aspects of a system, whereas UML deals with a more abstract level. UML is a standardized modeling language used to visualize the design of a system. It is often used in the field of software engineering. You can view full specification here.

Flowchart is a very intuitive method to describe processes. As such, in most cases, you don’t need to worry too much about the standards and rules of all the flow chart symbols. In fact, a simple flowchart, constructed with just rectangular blocks and flowlines, can already get most jobs done. However, if you want to get technical and precise, there are preset rules and standards you can follow. Specifically, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) set standards for flowcharts and their symbols in the 1960s. Afterwards, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted the ANSI symbols in 1970. In general, flowcharts flow from top to bottom and left to right. See additional details at https://www.zenflowchart.com/.