SmartDraw is like a Leatherman’s tool–those little gadgets with 20 different tools packed into something the size of a pair of pliers. Have you ever tried to do much real work with one of those? They’re handy in a pinch but rarely suitable for doing real work. SmartDraw is the same way. It seems like a cool idea until you try to do anything useful with it. It’s also interesting, at the time of this review, there are 7 other SmartDraw 2008 reviews posted here. SmartDraw has been out since fall of 2007–about 6 months now. Yet all 7 of the other reviews are dated between Dec 7th and Dec 13th–just 5 days apart. All are glowing 5 star reviews. And all but 2 of them are by people who have only reviewed SmartDraw products. That seems really odd to me? For what it’s worth, I don’t work for SmartDraw. If you check out the SmartDraw website, or take a casual look at the software, it seems quite impressive. There’s a rich library of templates and examples for over 20 categories of drawings. But look closer. Those engineering drawings and floor plans? There’s no dimensions on any of them. You know why? Because SmartDraw, unlike Visio and other competitors, doesn’t know how to do dimensions. So even if you’re only trying to draw up plans for a doghouse, SmartDraw is kind of worthless. Want to do electrical drawings? Same problem. Lots of essential things are missing. Flowcharts? Well those look good at first. Then I discovered the dimensions of the objects in the templates are different than those in the library. So when you go to modify the template for your own needs, nothing matches. And in some cases, things are even off grid so they don’t even line up and won’t connect.

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