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Develop Your Ideas

In the technique of Mind Mapping, you develop the central theme in several main ideas of wide range which are represented with the help of main topics. These ideas/topics can in their turn be further developed in subtopics which are put as children topics (subtopics). This lets you organize the ideas, details and associations, at the same time keeping the view of the whole.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP makes it easy to develop and organize your ideas quickly: it offers convenient tools and features for managing topics and moving between them, as well as the extended formatting options.

You can add topics to the main idea, to other topics, callouts.

If you want to add the topic to the object (parent object), first select it (it can be for instance, an isolated topic or the topic of the upper level).

To add the topic or subtopic, do one of the following:
Toolbar	Click the Add Topic or Add Subtopic button on the Topic Management toolbar.
Menu	Choose the Add Topic or Add Subtopic item from the Topic menu.
Context menu	Choose the Add Topic or Add Subtopic item from the topic context menu.
Mouse	Double-click on the map (in this case the topic will be added to the main idea).
	Draw manually with the Freehand tool.
Keyboard	Use the following keys: Enter, Ctrl + Space - Add a topic of the same level as that of the currently selected one. Insert, Shift + Enter - 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.

Every new topic is glued to its parent, and remains connected to it even when moved. You can adjust the form and the position of a topic by choosing and dragging it.

Once you have added a topic, you can type its text, i.e. the idea presented. The text of the topic may contain one or more lines. You can edit and format the text of the topics - see the "Working with Text on Mind Map Topics" section.

The new topics themselves take the default formatting (line, fill properties). New subtopics inherit their parent's formatting. You can change line properties and formatting - see the "Line Properties", "Formatting a Mind Map" sections.

To set the style for all the topics of the map together:
Toolbar	Press the Map Theme button on the Map Management toolbar and choose the style in the drop-down list.
Menu	Choose the style from the Map Theme item from the Format menu.

Topics can be not only added to your mindmap automatically but also drawn independantly. If in the first case the program arranges the topics automatically in a certain order, in the second case you can arrange them the way you like.

To independantly draw topic choose the corresponding tool by one of the following ways:
Toolbar	Click the Freehand Topic button on the Topic Management toolbar.
Menu	Choose the Freehand Topic item from the Topic menu.

The pointer will look like .

Then move your pointer to the topic, holding the mouse button, drag the pointer to the needed direction. Having created the needed topic, release the button.

Mouse

For moving the topic you need to position the mouse pointer over it, choose it and start dragging.

As you move the topic, it remains connected to its parent, and reshapes accordingly. If the topic you move has any subtopics attached to it, the subtopics are moved together with it, and placed accordingly.

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