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Micro-review: Scapple

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superboyac:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php

I LOVE this program.  For me, it is the perfect brainstorming tool I've always been looking for.

It's easy to change the look of each element.  It's easy to put background shapes around a selection of elements.  It can export easily as images, pdf, whatever.  You don't need a "center" like most mindmaps.  It's easy to link things together with lines or arrows.  It's easy to do simple alignments of elements.

I've been looking for something like this for years.  I tried a whole bunch.  Things like Personal Brain are too fancy and complicated.  Mindmaps never worked for me at all.  Visio is too much and too hard to do simple things.  I settled on Edge Diagrammer (thanks mouser!) for a while because it was the easiest of those flowchart tools to use.  Regular notetakers and outliners are not freeform enough for brainstorming.

 :up: :up:

40hz:
Oooooo! Now that looks really interesting. I've generally found formal mindmaps only useful in specific limited situations - and most times an outline works better for me when I need to do that sort of thinking.

The Brain I find virtually useless - whether it's because of the design of the program - or (more likely) my just "not getting it."

But this actually looks useful. Kinda like the sloppy balloon diagrams and 'comic book' dialog bubbles I tend to use when I'm playing a solitaire round of the glass bead game...

Grabbing the trial now.

Thx for sharing! :)

wraith808:
Yeah... I've been using that with Scrivener for a while, and it's great!  I plan to graduate to tinderbox eventually, but until I can justify that, this works.

40hz:
Tried it - and it seems to work with Linux under Wine too!

That's a big plus for me! :Thmbsup:

dr_andus:
There are also some free concept mappers out there, such as Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) (which I prefer) and CmapTools. Neither of these are hierarchical mind mappers, i.e. they do not force you to build a tree-like hierarchy. But they may not integrate with Scrivener as nicely as Scapple does, of course.

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