We cheapskates also have another free, less featured, online product available called Gliffy, and yes it does floor plans. That compares with Visio Professional at $499 or $199 for Visio standard. As for price, SmartDraw 2007 is currently selling for $197 ($100 off until 7 Nov). The 30 day free trial for version 6 helped me to decide to purchase it. I don’t think that this is enough time to really evaluate it.

So what are the pros and cons here? First, SmartDraw has reduced their free trial period from 30 days to 7 days. I should add that if you create drawings in the new SmartDraw 2007 you won’t be able to open them in SD version 7, even though they each have the same *.sdr extension. I had tried with the previous version but it was a heck of a lot more work. It is much more intuitive and I was creating floor plans in minutes (my next task on our Commons project). Since SmartDraw is a small company with what I consider a good product, I don’t mind this relationship.Īfter downloading 2007, I found it to be a quantum leap beyond the previous versions. I’m also an affiliate which means that I can refer potential customers and receive a small commission for my efforts. I purchased SmartDraw 6, actually wrote an unpaid endorsement for the product and became a beta tester for SmartDraw 7, for which I received a free copy of that version – a good deal. My initial search had me looking for something cheaper than Visio, and at the time, SmartDraw was about 75% cheaper. I’ve been using SmartDraw since 2003 when I first looked for a Visio replacement to create diagrams and other visual graphics.

Smartdraw trial