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Creating New Document
Creating a new document. Adding topics. Working with text. Changing the style of your mind map.
Mind Maps are perfect for creating clear, illustrative learning and training materials. A mind map is a hierarchical diagram formed around a main idea. The Main Idea is surrounded by topics, which contribute to the Main Topics in the diagram. Together all of the information supports the main idea. Each topic can be further detailed by subtopics, located in a lower level of the topic hierarchy. Other ways to communicate in your map are to use symbols, pictures, colors, text styles and so on to help attract more attention and assist in memory retention.
Let's start learning about ConceptDraw MINDMAP by creating a business plan in the form of a mind map. The business plan will describe the process of organizing Internet sales.
When you launch the application, the startup dialog offers you several choices on how to begin your work.
Let's choose the Start to Mind Map item. In spite of the name, the document is not completely blank – the main idea is added to the document automatically.
Let's name the main idea "My Business Plan". To edit text:
- Switch to edit mode by selecting the main idea and start typing text or you can press the F2 button and type the text.
- After the text will be entered let's quit the editing mode by clicking the mouse outside the edit box, or pressing the Enter or F2 again.
Note how the topic is sized automatically to accommodate the text you type.
There are many ways to increase Internet sales. That means that our mind map will contain many main topics аnd subtopics. Topics of the created map can be ordered in a certain way. The ordering of the topics clockwise from the top is the program's default, but this default ordering can be changed.
Topic ordering can be changed with the Topic Ordering  button on the Map Management toolbar.
For this map we are going to change the topic ordering so that the topics will be ordered in parallel top down and left to right. |
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Let's add the main topics and subtopics in the map by different ways:
- Using the Insert topic
 and Insert subtopic  buttons on the Topic Management toolbar
- Double-clicking on the map (in this case the topic will be added to the main idea)
- Using the following keys:
Enter, Ctrl + Space - to add a topic of the same level as that of the currently selected one;
Insert, Shift + Enter - to add a subtopic to the selected topic
If no topic is selected or the main idea is selected, a new topic will be added to it
- Drawing manually with the Freehand tool we select this by pressing the
 button on the Map Management toolbar.
When choosing the Freehand tool, the mouse pointer will look like:  . Move the pointer to the parent topic. Hold down the mouse button, and drag the topic in the desired direction. Having created the free hand topic, now release the mouse button.
By adding topics, subtopics and changing names we can create a map of the following structure:
Changing map style. Choose the line type of the lines connecting topics with subtopics. For this:
- Open the Format topics dialog using the
 button on the Topic Management toolbar or from the Format / Topics... menu
- Choose the Shape tab in the Format topics dialog
- Next choose the Curve style in the Subtopics Line Style section
Now your mind map is ready.
- To print it, press the Ctrl + P shortcut or the Print
 button on Main toolbar or choose the File / Print Map... menu command.
- To save it, press the Ctrl + S shortcut or the Save
 button on Main toolbar, or the File / Save menu command.
- To close the map, press the Ctrl + F4 shortcut or the File / Close menu command.
- To open a saved map, call the Open File dialog (Ctrl + O shortcut, or
 button, or File / Open... menu command)
- You can export a map to different file formats and use it in other applications, such as graphic formats (e.g. *.bmp, *.gif), PDF and PowerPoint file format when preparing presentations. Choose any format in the File / Export menu.
- You can also import different file formats into ConceptDraw MINDMAP to use in your maps (File / Import menu command).
The bottom line:
- ConceptDraw MINDMAP is perfect for drawing well-structured, clear and professional training and learning materials.
- The toolbar allows you to change the structure of the mind map and add or remove topics at any level of the topic hierarchy.
- You have the ability to change the style attributes of the map.
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