Creating a diagram to document criteria for identifying an object

[Clariman]

At first I was going to ask if there are free tools out there to create flow-charts, where I type in a series of questions and link them together to help define or identify something. I know there are drawing tools out there but was thinking of something smarter that would lay it out for me based on my questions and routing of answers.

While I would appreciate any answers to that, I'd also like to ask the question in a broader way. i.e. what ways are there to clearly lay out a set of criteria which would help identify something, particularly where some of the criteria may be linked or where some of the answers to the questions are more complicated than Yes or No e.g. criteria might included - if there are more than N examples and it appears in contexts A and B, then there is a High probability that it is an X. I guess you could do that with a flowchart.

A flow chart would do it but I think some of the questions would appear more than once. Perhaps it is more of a weighting than a series of Yes/No questions?

Perhaps a bit more information on the application might help. I'm doing some research into >1000 year old artefacts which contain various designs. Some of these designs are Christian iconography, some are likely to be decorative, but there are others which are used in such a way that they appear to carry some meaning - either as symbols or possibly even language. I have analysed many of the designs and am identifying criteria to define which ones fall into this latter 'Symbolic' group. I want to display this in easy to follow diagram or table.

Many thanks
C

[mc2fool]

I've no first hand experience of it, but a quick google for free directed graph software brings up https://www.graphviz.org/, which looks pretty flexible judging from the Gallery page.

[Clariman]

I've no first hand experience of it, but a quick google for free directed graph software brings up https://www.graphviz.org/, which looks pretty flexible judging from the Gallery page.

That looks like the kind of thing. Although it appears to do a lot more, it would do what I wanted. However, I cannot work out how to install it for Windows or access it online??? Perhaps installing it is simpler than it looks but it looks like the kind of software a SysAdmin would install.

Anyone know how to access it simply as an individual user?

Thanks

[Bminusrob]

I have used the free version of Lucidchart (http://www.lucidchart.com) very successfully for drawing diagrams. One of their free templates is a flowchart template, so it would be well worth trying.

[mc2fool]

I've no first hand experience of it, but a quick google for free directed graph software brings up https://www.graphviz.org/, which looks pretty flexible judging from the Gallery page.

That looks like the kind of thing. Although it appears to do a lot more, it would do what I wanted. However, I cannot work out how to install it for Windows or access it online??? Perhaps installing it is simpler than it looks but it looks like the kind of software a SysAdmin would install.

Anyone know how to access it simply as an individual user?

Well I just tried and it's pretty straightforward. I clicked on Download, scrolled down to Windows, clicked on Stable 2.38 Windows install packages and then on graphviz-2.38.msi, which it downloaded and I then ran, and that installed it.

That gave me a Graphviz 2.38 folder under the Start button, under which the first item is gvedit.exe. I ran that and in it chose File->New and I then copied and pasted into it the .gv file from one of the Gallery examples on their website, then chose Graph->Layout and lo and behold the graph appeared looking exactly like the Gallery example. I tried a few others with the same results.

It does, as you say, appear to do lots and there's clearly a bit of a learning curve. I think you can just ignore most of its capabilities (in particular all the stuff about libraries and programming). I'd suggest you do as I did and install it and try out some of their examples, and try changing some of them to get an idea of what you can do, digging around their website to find out how. The links to Documentation, FAQ and the searchable notes under Resources look useful.

For example, I took the fsm example and changed/added to the .gv to include (my additions/changes in bold):

:
node [shape = doublecircle]; LR_0 LR_3 LR_4 LR_8;
LR_0 [label="Chi Rho"];
node [shape = circle];
LR_0 -> LR_2 [ label = "Yes" ];
LR_0 -> LR_1 [ label = "No" ];
:

Which changed the text in the leftmost circle to Chi Rho and the text on the lines coming from it to Yes and No.

But, as I said earlier, I've not used it before and, indeed, the above is now my total experience, so how suitable it'll be for you, and how much of a learning curve it will be, I'll leave you to discover ...

[Clariman]

Thanks both.

I've been playing around with https://www.draw.io/ and managed to create a flow-chart but I have to lay it out, which means that any edits involve a lot of moving around and re-checking.

Now that mc2fool has shown how easy the installation of Graphviz is, I'll give that a go and see how it turns out. The markup language looks pretty easy to get to grips with for what I want to do.

C

[mc2fool]

Now that mc2fool has shown how easy the installation of Graphviz is, I'll give that a go and see how it turns out. The markup language looks pretty easy to get to grips with for what I want to do.

And having got the hang of the markup language and figured out how to use it to get what you want, I predict your next DAK post will be asking how to create the markup directly from your Access database ...

(And, yes, I'd definitely be thinking about looking into generating the markup in a report, which can be exported to text....)

[eepee]

I use Diagram Designer from http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/

Mostly but not exclusively for software flowcharts.

I like it so much that I have made a donation to the author.

Regards,
ep

[MikeyWorld]

There is also process management software like Prom Lite (Free) that can help you to identify decision points and data flows within a system. There should be some vids on YouTube.