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Free (as in beer) Windows Flowcharting?

Posted by Cliff on from the diagrams-of-geometric-shapes dept.

bhtooefr asks: "I need a flowcharting program for use in one of my programming classes at Central Ohio Technical College, and I can't afford to spend much money. The instructor recommended that I use Microsoft Visio, but it's way past my budget (and I can't obtain it for free). I've tried a free trial app (SmartDraw), but I didn't like the UI at all. Kivio won't do the job, because the free version is only for KDE, and Kivio MP isn't free. However, if there's a Kivio port to Windows that is free, I'd be rather interested. Any ideas here?"

9 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Visual Thought by lightspawn · · Score: 4, Informative

    Get it here.

  2. Heard of Dia? by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Informative
    It's not only free, it's Free and it's available for unix platforms as well as Windows.

    Dia, a drawing program
    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Programming Flowcharting = UML by ChaseTec · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you're really wanting to do charting for programming then you probably want to do UML. ArgoUML is Java based and the recent versions work pretty good.

    --
    My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
  4. Re:Visio rules by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who gives a shit about free software. The guy has a project to get done.

    There is nothing wrong with paying $60 for a very well designed and useful piece of software. Visio is a stellar product, which is why MS bought the company.

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  5. Star Office by sql*kitten · · Score: 2, Informative

    Star Office Drawing is as good as Visio for simple tasks. It's free for educational use.

  6. Better still, get KDE-CygWin... by leonbrooks · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...here, and get lotsa other stuff like Scribus thrown in.

    --
    Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
  7. ArgoUML by venkats · · Score: 2, Informative

    have you had a chance to look at
    ArgoUML (http://argouml.tigris.org/)?

  8. You *can* get Visio for free LEGALLY by __aailob1448 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Simply download the 2003 beta (technical refresh) version from Microsoft's website.It's a fully functional version that expires January 31st 2004.
    • http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/e/0/6e0 c5f5b-bb37-42bb-a189-bb66038fce2e/setup.exe
    You're welcome.
  9. Gantt charts? by Max+Webster · · Score: 2, Informative

    On a related note, are there free and easy-to-use Gantt charting programs available?

    Back in '89 it was really easy to produce and print Gantt charts using XML-like markup on an IBM mainframe. I had editor macros that would do things like change the expected end dates for a group of items, or change both the start and end dates.

    Since IBM unplugged that mainframe, I haven't seen anything like that functionality. Everything is graphically based and so not automatable, or kludged up in Excel, or elderly shareware written for Win 3.1 in Visual Basic.