Flowchart

A flowchart (also spelled flow-chart and flow chart) is a Schematic representation of a Process. They are commonly used in business/economic presentations to help the audience visualize the content better, or to find flaws in the process.

Examples include instructions for a bicycle s assembly, an attorney outlining a case s timeline, diagram of an automobile plant s work flow, the decisions to be taken on a tax form, et cetera.

Generally the start point, end points, inputs, outputs, possible paths and the decisions that lead to these possible paths are included.

Many humorous flowcharts exist, e.g. one that outlines how to pass the blame if something goes wrong.

Flow-charts can be created by hand or manually in most office software, but lately specialized diagram drawing software has emerged that can also be used for the purpose, such as Visio, OpenOffice.org Draw, Dia and SmartDraw.

Programs have been written to create flowcharts directly from computer program source.

=History of use=

Flowcharts were used historically in Data processing to represent the conditional logic of computer programs. With the emergence of structured programming and structured design in the 1980 s, visual formalisms like data flow diagrams and structure charts begun to supplant the use of flowcharts. With the widespread adoption of such ALGOL-like computer languages as Pascal, textual models like Pseudocode have been used more often to represent Algorithms. In the 1990 s Unified Modeling Language begun to synthesize and codify these modeling languages.

=Creating flowcharts on a computer=

There are various packages for creating flowcharts, according to different standards. The most common is Unified Modeling Language, for which there are abundant packages for various platforms. See Unified Modeling Language for list. The creation of simple flowcharts on a computer is fairly easy with any vector-based drawing program, but Microsoft Word (versions 97 through 2003) and OpenOffice.org (Draw app) both have specialized tools for making consistent charts. For Mac OS X OmniGraffle [http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/] is an excellent application.

When in Word, enable the Drawing toolbar and click Autoshapes then Flowcharts and finally on the appropriate shape you would like. Right-click on a shape and then click Add Text to do so. The Arrow or Line tool is used to manually draw links.

When in Draw, enable the Flowchart palette and click a shape to add it in. Double-clicking a shape will add text to it within appropriate boundaries. Connections can be automatically made between shapes using Connectors and Glue Points - click on the Connector arrow to see a selection of them before dragging from a Glue Point on a shape to another. Draw will maintain the link and automatically redraw the connector if you resize or move any shape.

=See also=

*Unified Modeling Language (UML) *State diagram *Control flow graph *Data flow diagram *Petri net

=External links=

*[http://www.fh-jena.de/~kleine/history/software/IBM-FlowchartingTechniques-GC20-8152-1.pdf Flowcharting Techniques , an IBM manual from 1969] (5MB PDF format) *[http://www.tpub.com/neets/book22/93c.htm Tools of Flowcharting ] *[http://agilemodeling.com/artifacts/flowChart.htm The Object Primer 3rd Edition: Agile Model Driven Development with UML 2 ] by Scott W. Ambler *[http://nos.org/htm/basic2.htm Flowcharting Basics] - from the National Institute of Open Schooling. Contains info on standard symbols *[http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/020605/panflute-flowchart.gif toothpaste for dinner: Panflute Flowchart] *[http://www.myalgorithm.com/diagramas-flujo.html Flow Charts Examples] - Spanish *[http://speedy.embl-heidelberg.de/gtsp/flowchart2.html A Flowchart for Structure Prediction] by Rob Russell *[http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/flowchart.htm The criminal justice system flowchart] *[http://www.qualityclinics.com/article.htm Article from Quality World on Flowcharting]