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Basic Flowchart Symbols and Meaning

Flowcharts are the best for visually representation the business processes and the flow of a custom-order process through various departments within an organization. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM diagramming and vector drawing software extended with Flowcharts solution offers the full set of predesigned basic flowchart symbols which are gathered at two libraries: Flowchart and Flowcharts Rapid Draw. Among them are: process, terminator, decision, data, document, display, manual loop, and many other specific symbols. The meaning for each symbol offered by ConceptDraw gives the presentation about their proposed use in professional Flowcharts for business and technical processes, software algorithms, well-developed structures of web sites, Workflow diagrams, Process flow diagram and correlation in developing on-line instructional projects or business process system. Use of ready flow chart symbols in diagrams is incredibly useful - you need simply drag desired from the libraries to your document and arrange them in required order. There are a few serious alternatives to Visio for Mac, one of them is ConceptDraw DIAGRAM. It is one of the main contender with the most similar features and capabilities.
How to Build a Flowchart
How to Build a Flowchart

Types of Flowcharts

A Flowchart is a graphical representation of process, algorithm, workflow or step-by-step solution of the problem. It shows the steps as boxes of various kinds and connects them by arrows in a defined order depicting a flow. There are twelve main Flowchart types: Basic Flowchart, Business Process Modeling Diagram (BPMN), Cross Functional Flowchart, Data Flow Diagram (DFD), IDEF (Integrated DEFinition) Flowchart, Event-driven Process Chain (EPC) Diagram, Influence Diagram (ID), Swimlane Flowchart, Process Flow Diagram (PFD), Specification and Description Language (SDL) Diagram, Value Stream Mapping, Workflow Diagram. Using the Flowcharts solution from the Diagrams area of ConceptDraw Solution Park you can easy and quickly design a Flowchart of any of these types. This solution offers a lot of special predesigned vector symbols for each of these widely used notations. They will make the drawing process of Flowcharts much easier than ever. Pay also attention for the included collection of ready Flowchart examples, samples and quick-start templates. This is business process improvement tools. If you are looking for MS Visio for your Mac, then you are out of luck, because it hasn't been released yet. However, you can use Visio alternatives that can successfully replace its functions. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM is an alternative to MS Visio for Mac that provides powerful features and intuitive user interface for the same.
How to Simplify Flow Charting
How to Simplify Flow Charting

Entity Relationship Diagram Symbols

The semantic modeling method nowadays is successfully applied in database structure design. It is effective method of modeling the data structures, which is based on the meaning of these data. As a tool of semantic modeling, there are used different types of Entity-Relationship Diagrams. Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is applied to visually and clearly represent a structure of a business database. The main components of ERDs are: entity, relation and attributes. An entity is a class of similar objects in the model, each entity is depicted in the form of rectangle and has the name expressed by a noun. Relation is shown in the form of non-directional line that connects two entities. There are several notation styles used for ERDs: information engineering style, Chen style, Bachman style, Martin Style. The Entity Relationship Diagram symbols used for professional ERD drawing are predesigned by professionals and collected in the libraries of the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM software.

UML Flowchart Symbols

The UML diagram is a powerful tool which lets visually represent all system's components, the interactions between them and relationships with external user interface. The Rapid UML solution for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM software offers diversity of UML flowchart symbols for drawing all types of UML diagrams.

Flowchart Components

The ConceptDraw Flowchart component includes a set of samples and templates. This geathered as flowchart maker toolbox which focused on drawing flowcharts of any industry standards.

Process Flowchart

The main reason of using Process Flowchart or PFD is to show relations between major parts of the system. Process Flowcharts are used in process engineering and chemical industry where there is a requirement of depicting relationships between major components only and not include minor parts. Process Flowcharts for single unit or multiple units differ in their structure and implementation. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM is Professional business process mapping software for making Process flowcharts, Process flow diagram, Workflow diagram, flowcharts and technical illustrations for business documents and also comprehensive visio for mac application. Easier define and document basic work and data flows, financial, production and quality management processes to increase efficiency of your business with ConcepDraw DIAGRAM. Business process mapping software with Flowchart Maker ConceptDraw DIAGRAM includes extensive drawing tools, rich examples and templates, process flowchart symbols and shape libraries, smart connectors that allow you create the flowcharts of complex processes, process flow diagrams, procedures and information exchange. Process Flowchart Solution is project management workflow tools which is part ConceptDraw Project marketing project management software. Drawing charts, diagrams, and network layouts has long been the monopoly of Microsoft Visio, making Mac users to struggle when needing such visio alternative like visio for mac, it requires only to view features, make a minor edit to, or print a diagram or chart. Thankfully to MS Visio alternative like ConceptDraw DIAGRAM software, this is cross-platform charting and business process management tool, now visio alternative for making sort of visio diagram is not a problem anymore however many people still name it business process visio tools.
How To Create a Process Flow Chart (business process modelling techniques)
How To Create a Process Flow Chart (business process modelling techniques)

SDL Flowchart Symbols

Drawing the diagrams we try to find in help the powerful software and now we have the ConceptDraw DIAGRAM. The ability easily create the SDL diagrams is made possible thanks to unique Specification and Description Language (SDL) Solution from the Industrial Engineering Area of ConceptDraw Solution Park. This solution extends ConceptDraw DIAGRAM libraries - SDL Connectors and SDL Diagrams that contain 70 predesigned SDL flowchart symbols.

ERD Symbols and Meanings

Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a popular software engineering tool for database modeling and illustration the logical structure of databases, which uses one of two notations - Chen's or Crow’s Foot. Crow's foot notation is effective when used in software engineering, information engineering, structured systems analysis and design. Each of these notations applies its own set of ERD symbols. Crow's foot diagrams use boxes to represent entities and lines between these boxes to show relationships. Varied shapes at the ends of lines depict the cardinality of a given relationship. Chen's ERD notation is more detailed way to represent entities and relationships. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM application enhanced with all-inclusive Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) solution allows design professional ER diagrams with Chen's or Crow’s Foot notation on your choice. It contains the full set of ready-to-use standardized ERD symbols and meanings helpful for quickly drawing, collection of predesigned ERD samples, examples and templates. ConceptDraw Pro is a great alternative to Visio for Mac users as it offers more features and can easily handle the most demanding professional needs.
How to Build an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
How to Build an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)

DFD Flowchart Symbols

A Data Flow Diagram (DFD) is a graphical technique which allows effectively model and analyze the information processes and systems. The ability to fast and easy create the DFDs is made possible with Data Flow Diagrams solution from the Software Development area of ConceptDraw Solution Park. For designing the Data Flow Diagrams are used simple DFD flowchart symbols which are connected each other by arrows depicting the data flow from one step to another.

Workflow Flowchart Symbols

The Workflow diagrams are the specialized type of flowcharts which allow to visualize any sorts of step-by-step processes. They are usually created as flowcharts, with objects that represent in a simple visual manner the steps in the process connected by arrows that indicate the next step. The ability easily create Workflow diagrams visually describing the tasks, documents associated with the tasks, people which are responsible for execution at each stage of workflow is made possible with Workflow Diagrams solution. This solution extends ConceptDraw DIAGRAM with a Workflow Diagram library that contains large collection of predesigned workflow flowchart symbols.