Description
INSTAVIZ is diagram sketching for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Sketch some rough shapes and lines and Instaviz magically turns them into beautifully laid-out diagrams.
“Instaviz’s impressive strength is the way that it intelligently rearranges your flowchart for an optimal layout on the fly.” — ★★★★☆ Touch Reviews.
“Here’s what I like about it, I don’t have to worry about picking tools to draw the various shapes — I have a tool right here: it’s my finger!” — 5/5, BestAppSite.
“Instaviz is one of the best mindmapping apps that i’ve come across. It’s dead simple to use and works quite well.” — 8/10 Editor's Pick, AppCraver.
“I often wish for a tool that would let me sketch charts on my iPhone. Instaviz is exactly what the doctor ordered.” — TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Blog.
“On the iPhone my mindmapping app of choice is Instaviz. It is a powerful, yet easy to use app that can’t help but impress.” — Gear Diary.
When you were young, the grown-ups used to catch you doodling little circles and lines on the back of your exercise books or paper napkins, instead of paying attention to what they said. They didn’t realize that you need to sketch things out, how they relate to other things, in order to get them into your head and other people’s heads.
Much later, you learnt the grown-up names for the sketch — mindmap, concept map, semantic network, org chart, flowchart, social network, workflow diagram, genomic hierarchy, E-R diagram...
Instaviz is a pocket whiteboard. Throw away the exercise books and paper napkins, Instaviz will figure out the diagram for you. Brainstorm and conceptualize like you use pencil and paper, without a pesky interface getting in your way. Then with a couple of taps, share your diagrams with friends and colleagues through email and websites.
• Tap on the Edit button and sketch out a rough shape. Instaviz magically transforms it into a neat ellipse, circle, rectangle, square, diamond or triangle.
• Tap on the Edit button and sketch a link between two shapes. Instaviz quickly redraws the diagram with the most pleasing layout.
• Scroll the diagram by dragging with one finger, or use two fingers in Edit mode. Zoom in and out by pinching with two fingers.
• To edit the label, color or style of a shape or link, tap on the Edit button, then double-tap on the shape or link.
• To change the shape, tap on the Edit button, then tap on the shape to select it and sketch the new shape over the old one.
• To delete a shape or link, tap on the Edit button, then tap on shape or link to select it and shake the iPhone.
• To share the diagram, tap on the action button at the main Graphs list, tap the graphs to check them, then choose a sharing method. You can preview to Camera Roll or Saved Photos, Email or Export the diagram to box.net, iDisk (MobileMe) or any WebDAV server. You can choose Graphviz GV, PDF, PNG and Visio VDX formats.
• To import a new diagram, tap on the action button button at the main Graphs list, then tap on the Import button. You can import the diagram from box.net, iDisk (MobileMe) or any website, in the Graphviz GV format.
WATCH a video of Instaviz in action:
http://instaviz.com/video/1/
http://instaviz.com/video/2/
http://instaviz.com/video/3/
PRINT and EXPORT Instaviz diagrams with the FREE Mac and Windows application Instavue:
http://instaviz.com/instavue/
• Instaviz uses Recog, a new shape recognition engine. Trained on over 2,500 sketches drawn by real users, Recog uses advanced fuzzy logic to recognize what you just sketched in a split second.
• Instaviz uses Graphviz as its automated graph layout engine. The industry standard for automated graph layout, Graphviz represents over 18 years of research work at AT&T and won two Apple Design Awards in 2004.
What's New in Version 1.10
• Fixes crash after setting background color.
• Fixes occasional crash when clearing graph.
See complete list of enhancements and bug fixes: http://trac.pixelglow.com/instaviz/wiki/WhatHasChanged
Customer Reviews
Shockingly limited for $10 app
I work with real whiteboards and graphing software regularly. This application violates two of the primary rules of whiteboarding: redraw and rearrange.
I'm not interested in InstaViz organizing my shapes and connectors for me. I like being able to draw with my finger, but if I draw a big square, then I want a big square, not a tiny square predetermined by an InstaViz algorithm.
And why in the world would you create an app that doesn't allow you to move your shapes? Auto-arrangement is as intrusive and unhelpful as many aspects of auto-correction in Word. All you want to do is turn it off.
For the price, one of the least impressive app buys so far.
Flow Charts made Easy !
Talk about making the process of making a flow chart easy !
Looks like more updates are on the way.
Developer Please add:
Object resize
Ability to select and make same type of objects the same size
Ability to move objects and anchor in selected position
For auto positioning of linked items allow selection from top to bottom or Left to right
External to the object Text caption
allow custom Back ground color or image
An excellent app that would be outstanding with a few enhancements
I work in the consulting division for a large enterprise software company. This app is worth $10 and would be worth more with some enhancements outlined below.
It is really powerful to be able to walk into a customer meeting, have a complex whiteboard session, and churn out a clean almost-PowerPoint quality diagram within 5 minutes of the meeting’s end. Instaviz does that, and almost (but not quite) to the level we need for systems architecture work.
Frequently my colleagues and I design two kinds of diagrams in Visio: Data Flows and System Architectures. It’s a painstaking and incredibly slow process of clciking and dragging at the PC. Instaviz does 75% of what we need it to do in 1/10th the amount of time as Visio. We can actually go into a meeting and come out with a PDF document for the client – instantly. No more long nights with Visio (though cross-compatibility is there if needed). Love that we can produce a PowerPoint-ready diagram in near real-time following the conclusion of an IT architecture brainstorming session!
That being said, I have some feedback that would help take the app to the next level.
1. Allow anchoring shapes to specific “layers,” like the layers of a cake. For Data Flow diagrams, Instaviz needs to allow “anchoring” of like-minded shapes to specific “layers” in a document. This is needed when there is a branched sequence where some branches of the process skip some steps, but still need to remain visually grouped with their sibling shapes. This enhancement would require a UI gesture to lasso or otherwise group shapes by “family or layer.” Shapes that belong with a specific family/layer would always be visually grouped together according to the layout rules that you are already applying to the farthest-away member of that family/layer.
2. Enable the user to tap-to-covert from a basic shape to a simple vector graphic picture (i.e., instead of a square, a simple colour vector image of a server, or a depiction of a user). You could sell these graphics as an in-app purchase – for example, buy the “IT icons pack” for $3.99. If you could change a shape into any one of my 9 favourite vector images (users; servers; firewalls; desktops; mobile devices; databases; clouds; storage disk; load balancers). I’d be willing to pay, say, at least $5-10 for an in-app purchase. (It would save me more than enough time to justify that cost -- having a pretty architecture diagram with vector-based pictures instead of shapes.)
3. Enable manual positioning of shapes as is possible in Visio (i.e., option to disable Instaviz’s auto-positioning of shapes). Just an option to fall back on when the app doesn’t layout the elements ideally. (But to be clear, the auto-positioning of elements is perhaps the biggest selling point of the Instaviz for me so to disable it would be something I would only do on occasion).
4. If possible, exported PDFs should default to “Fit Page” zoom-level when opening on desktop PCs. Currently the exported PDFs default to “Fit Width” when opened in Adobe; I believe there is a public API method to force PDFs to open “Fit Page.” Fit Page is by far the preferred default viewing option for the majority of diagram PDFs – otherwise you force the recipient of the PDF to click “zoom out” multiple times.
5. Allow adding a simple Page Title to either of the upper corners of the document. A basic text field would suffice.
As it is, because I am patient and dogged, I can use Instaviz to and invent work-arounds that cobble-together 40-50% of the types of diagrams I produce. But, if you address issues 1 and 2 above (and hopefully issues 3, 4, and 5), the app will be indispensible.
- $9.99
- Category: Business
- Updated: Sep 08, 2010
- Version: 1.10
- Size: 3.3 MB
- Languages: English, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish
- Seller: Pixelglow Software
- © 2008–2010 Pixelglow Software Pty. Ltd.
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.0 or later
