NovaMind News

Importing, Exporting, and Printing

This video teaches you some important considerations about importing as well as about export and printing.

 

Here is the transcript:

You can access the import, export and printing options through the NovaMind menu by clicking on the round icon at the top left of the NovaMind window.

In the imports section you will find the option to import from a number of formats such as NovaMind 3 and 4, Mind Manager 7 and 8, XMind, FreeMind, Plain Text, and OPML. The actual import and export options you see will depend on whether you have a NovaMind Express, Pro, or Platinum license.

The import of the other Mind Mapping formats allows you to easily migrate your Mind Maps over from your old programs to NovaMind.

The plain text import gives you an easy way of getting raw text into NovaMind, and the OPML format gives you the ability to import hierarchical data from outlining programs.

The Microsoft Project import allows you to easily visualize your project data.

The import from old versions of NovaMind, and some other Mind Mapping formats bring in the raw information but not most of the formatting. This is because if you imported all the formatting, then it would be overriding the theme and color settings, and you would not be able to easily get the benefits of the new visual settings of NovaMind 5. You would not get the automatic text coloring, the automatic fonts, or the ability to respond to color set changes or theme changes properly, because everything would be a custom color, shape, and font.

Also if we tried to position all the topics where they were in NovaMind 3 and 4, then you would end up with a Mind Map that was very hard to work with because everything would be manually positioned from the outset, and would therefore mean that you were not getting the benefit of the automatic layout system at all, and even if we did try to use those positions, it may well look different to what you had in the old version anyway due to the different features in NovaMind 5.

NovaMind 5 is a completely new program from the ground up, and includes very powerful new tools for laying out Mind Maps, so you will be able to very quickly edit them to be much nicer than they were in older versions of NovaMind.

It is for these reasons that we chose to keep the imports of formatted files to the basics, so you can benefit from the powerful new features in NovaMind 5.

The export options allow you to export to formats such as PNG images, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Mind Manager 7 & 8, plain text, OPML, and Microsoft Project. This allows you a wide range of options for sharing your Mind Maps with other people and using your data in different ways.

The printing options allow you to select from any of the printer settings defined by your printer driver, and to fit in the specified number of pages, and print a number of copies. The print preview allows you to see exactly how it will appear on the paper before you commit to printing it, thus saving some trees.

 

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User Interface

Watch this video to find out how to use the user interface of NovaMind 5 for Windows effectively. Learn to use the ribbon bar, side panels, zoom features and some shortcuts to make your life a whole lot easier.

 

Here is the transcript:

In this video, I’d like to give you some tips about getting the most out of the user interface in NovaMind 5.

NovaMind 5 uses the Microsoft Fluent user interface concepts, but has some unique features to make it easier to use for Mind Mapping.

One of the things you often want when you are Mind Mapping is to be able to see the absolute largest area of the Mind Map as possible at a time. To facilitate this, we have translucent scrollbars that only become opaque when you mouse over them, and a sidebar that you can close so that it doesn’t take up any room.

You can also double-click one of the tabs of the ribbon bar and the ribbon bar will be hidden, but you will still be able to use it by clicking on a tab, and selecting the item you want, and then it will be hidden again. To show it again permanently, just double-click a tab.

The ribbon bar tabs are broken up into command groups. At the bottom right of a number of the groups on the ribbon bar tabs, you will see a small square icon. This is called a dialog box launcher, and allows you access to advanced formatting options in a dialog box. If you are doing a lot of work using the options on the dialog, you might want to keep it open so you have it available as a floating formatting panel.

The NovaMind menu is accessed by clicking the round NovaMind icon in the top left corner of the window, and contains a lot of options for importing and exporting to different file formats.

Just to the right of the NovaMind menu button are some handy shortcuts for saving the files, and undo and redo. Undo can also be accessed using Ctrl+Z and redo using Ctrl+Y.

At the lower left corner of the window is a row of icons to access the different panels like the outline view and topic notes etc.

If you have plugins installed which have sidebar panels associated with them, they will also be accessible on this bar, and if they add ribbon bar tabs, they will be available in the ribbon bar.

Also at the bottom right is the zoom slider and zoom amount selection, but you can also zoom in or out directly on the Mind Map if you have a scroll wheel on your mouse. Just hold the Ctrl key down while you use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out. This also has the advantage that the zooming will be centered around your mouse position.

To pan the Mind Map, right click and drag, or use the scroll bars.

 

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Mind Map Layout

Watch this video to learn how to arrange the topics on your Mind Map using NovaMind’s unique and powerful layout system..

 

Here is the transcript:

The layout system in NovaMind is one of the very powerful and unique things about the program. No other Mind Mapping programs have capabilities even closely resembling what we offer, so I’ll just go through it in a bit of detail so you can get the most out of it.

You can alter the layout of the Mind Map by selecting a topic that you want to lay out the subtopics of, and choosing a layout option. Quite often you will want to use the radial layout for the first level topics and linear layout for the subtopics, but it’s up to you.

You can change the layout settings on any topic. This means that you can have the subtopics laid out at any angle, either radial or linear, and change it for each topic if you so desire.
NovaMind will automatically keep the Mind Map in the most compact form possible, only moving topics the minimum amount to avoid them colliding with each other. But if you want to have more room between a topic and its subtopics, you can use the advanced settings and set the children offset (which is the distance from the topic to its subtopics) and also the repel distance between the siblings.

You set the angle that the subtopics are layout at using the angle control. If you click on one of the quadrants, it will rotate the axes to be either vertical or horizontal in that direction, but if you want it to be laid out at another angle, just drag it to be the angle that you want.

Normally the layout of the descendant topics is automatically the same as what you have set for the parent topics, but you can take control at any level and change the settings. If you want to revert to getting the inherited setting, just click on the “Reset to Default” either in the dialog box or layout popup menu.

Sometimes, you will want to visually group topics and push other topics out of the way to give this visual separation. This is normally accomplished by inserting a boundary, and adjusting its shape as required. Here’s a little trick for you – you can actually insert a boundary by using the boundary shape setting on the format tab. Then you can use the advanced settings to set the margin.

In most cases, the automatic layout of the topics should be everything you require, but occasionally you may want to move a topic to a specific location. To do this, just mouse over the topic and you will see both the graft and move controls. To move the topic to another place, drag it using the move icon with the four arrows on it, and to put it back into its automatically laid out position, use the Reset Location option. If you want to move all the subtopics of a topic back to their default locations, use the Arrange Sub-topics option.

Note that sometimes, there may have been offsets applied to other topics in order to keep the ones you that moved where you moved them to. If this happens, and you reset the moved topic, it will leave the other ones that had to have the offset applied where they were. In this case, you might either want to reset the other affected topics, or just select the parent and use the Arrange Sub-topics option.

As you build your Mind Map, you are bound to need to graft topics from one place on the Mind Map to another. To do this, drag the topic by its graft handle. If you have multiple topics selected, they will all be grafted in the graft operation. The indicator will show where the topics will be attached when you drop them, so you can easily see what the effect will be.

If you’re part way through a drag operation and you decide you need to cancel it, just press the Escape key.

If you want to create a copy of the topics, you can hold the Ctrl key down while you drag the topics.

If you have a topic that you want to become a floating topic, just drag it away from the rest of the Mind Map, and then you can Move it to where you want to position it.

If you have a floating topic that you want to become part of the Mind Map, then use the graft operation to drag it and attach it to the Mind Map.

You can also drag topics from the Mind Map to the outline view or vice versa. There is more information about this in the video about the outline view.

You should be aware that if you are using the radial layout, there are topics on the left and the right of the parent topic, and if you just move a topic, it will still be laid out as if it was on the side it was attached to, so if you want to swap it to the other side, you will need to graft it from one side to the other. This gives you a lot of flexibility in the way the subtopics are laid out in relation to their parents.

If you don’t want to see the subtopics, you can collapse them away so they are hidden. You will see a small Plus icon to show that there are collapsed subtopics. Click it to expand the subtopics.

 

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Themes, Color sets and Font sets

This video teaches you how to work with the themes to control the overall look of the Mind Maps, color sets and font sets, to keep the Mind Maps looking great.

 

Here is the transcript:

When you add anything to a Mind Map, the colors, fonts, and styling of the object are defined by the theme you are using at the time. If you don’t edit the formatting, then when you change to a different theme, then everything will be formatted according to the new theme you have selected. If you have changed any formatting to be different to what is used in the theme, then your custom formatting will be honored.

Color sets are sets of colors that are designed to go well together. You can use Color Sets to define the colors of your topics, when they use standard colors from the color sets. So if you have chosen the color from the second row, seventh from the left in one color set, it will get the color from the same position in the newly selected color set. In this way, the same level of contrast is preserved, and the colors will go well together.

If you have selected other colors than the theme, and they are still color set colors, they will be changed to the corresponding colors in the new color set, but if you have chosen custom colors, then they will be kept static when you change to a different color set.

The color set is defined as a set of 10 colors, and from these colors are derived another 50 colors as variations of the base colors, so that you have a wide range of colors that go well together, to fit the requirements of the Mind Map.

We recommend sticking to the themed colors wherever possible, so that if you want to change the look of the Mind Map later, you can very easily do so just by using a different color set.

For consistency, the themes also refer to the text by named fonts (e.g. Title or Callout), and these are the fonts that are used by default when creating items that use that specified font from the theme. Just as with colors, you can choose other themed fonts or custom fonts, and if you use themed fonts, and then change the theme font set, then it will use the font defined for the new font set. Note that the font set does only define the font face, whereas the theme itself defines the point size and other attributes.

 

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Text Editing Tips and Tricks

This video teaches you special tips and tricks that help you get the most out of editing the text on your NovaMind in NovaMind 5, including how to work with automatic coloring of text.

 

Here is the transcript:

Let’s talk bout text editing

Click to select a topic and just start typing to replace the text on a topic. You can easily see which topic you are editing because it has a red border around it. If you want to insert text part way along a topic, you can click a selected topic, and you will be put into editing mode with the cursor at the point you clicked. If you want to edit just using the keyboard, and want to edit the existing text, select the topic and press F2, and then use the arrow keys to position the cursor where you want and edit from there.

You can also double click to select a word, or triple click to select a whole paragraph.

When you have finished editing the topic, just press Enter to finish editing.

If you are editing and want to insert a new paragraph, press Ctrl+Enter, and if you want to just insert a newline within the same paragraph, press Shift+Enter.

The text formatting options are available on the home tab of the ribbon bar, but also if you have text selected, a formatting palette is available just above the text, to make it easier to access the formatting options wherever you are.

With most themes, the default coloring for text is “Automatic”. Automatic text sets its color automatically to the foreground or background color from the selected color set, and chooses the color which gives the greatest visual contrast to the background that it is drawn over.

For instance, if the foreground and background colors in the color set are black and white, which is usually the case, then if you have a topic that is filled with a dark color, the text will automatically be drawn white, and if your topic is filled with a light color, then your text color will automatically be black.

But of course, you have the option to select any other color you want. If you are using a specified color and want to change any text to be automatic coloring, just select it and you will see the automatic coloring option there in the color selection panel for you to choose.

There is the ability to add as many hyperlinks to any topic as you like, and that is the recommended way of using hyperlinks, but if you want to add a hyperlink within the text of your topic, you can do this too. Just select the text you want to have hyperlinked, and use the hyperlink button on the home tab of the ribbon bar, and enter the URL of the place you want to link to.

Often you will need to add more information than you would have just with the keywords on the topics, and this is done using the topic notes. You enter the notes by selecting a single topic on the Mind Map and displaying the notes sidebar panel. The same editing options are available in the notes as for the topic text.

 

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Selecting Topics and Navigating your Mind Map

This video will teach you how to select the topics with mouse, keyboard and shortcut keys, as well as how to zoom and pan to navigate around large Mind Maps.

 

Here is the transcript:

In this video, I’d like to talk about Selecting Topics and Navigating the Map

To select a topic, you can either just click on it, or click on the canvas and drag over the topics you want to select. If you hold down the Shift key while you do this, it will add the topics to the existing selection, and if you hold the Ctrl key it will invert the selection.

Using the keyboard, you can use the arrow keys to select topics. It uses a smart selection system where it will keep within the current topic hierarchy – siblings, parents, and sub-topics – where possible, but then will try to select the nearest neighbor topic in the direction you are trying to go. This gives a very natural feel to topic selection using arrow keys.

You can also select a topic and then on the home ribbon tab, there is the Select option which allows you to:
- Select All – which selects all the topics on the Mind Map. This is also accessible with the shortcut key Ctrl+A
You can select Siblings, which selects all the topics that have the same parent topic as the selected topic.
Select Children – selects all the immediate subtopics of the selected topic.
and select Descendants – selects all the subtopics, and all their subtopics all the way down the tree from the selected topic.

The options to select siblings, children and descendants are also available in the context menu when you right-click a topic.

To find your way around a big map, you can right click anywhere on the canvas and drag to pan the canvas.

You can also hold the Ctrl key down while using your scroll wheel to zoom in and out. The center of the scrolling will be where your mouse pointer is. Or if you just want to zoom to a certain amount, you can use the slider, text field or popup at the bottom right of the NovaMind document window to zoom in or out.

 

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Task Information

Watch this tutorial video to find out about recording task information on your topics.

 

Here is the transcript:

NovaMind has the ability to add task information to the topics. To add the information, just select the topic or topics you want to add the information to, and use the controls for setting the task information such as priority, percentage complete, duration, start and end dates and resources.

The priority is drawn as an icon at the left end of the topic, and gives you a visual indication of the priority of different tasks. The percentage complete is shown as a pie chart on the topic so that it is very easy to see how far through the task you are.

The other task information is shown below the topic in summary format. When you set the start date, finish date, and duration, you can either enter each one manually, or you can enter two values and use the calculate button to calculate the third value. The calculation is not tied to any calendar, so if you put in two dates a week apart, it will calculate the duration as 7 days even if you only have a 5 or 6 day working week.

For resources, you can enter the resource name and initials in the panel just by clicking the plus button. The panel will show you all the resources, and you can assign them to the selected task by checking the box beside them.

If you have multiple topics selected and they have different values for the task information, you will see a specially colored box around the items that have multiple values. If you do not change the settings on those controls, the individual settings will be preserved, but if you change a value, that value will be set on all the selected topics, and you will see that the multiple values indicator will disappear. If you have resources only assigned to some of the selected topics then those resources will show the indeterminate state in the checkbox beside that resource.

 

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Outline View

This video teaches you how to use the power features of the outline view to edit and rearrange your Mind Maps.

 

Here is the transcript:

NovaMind is unique in its ability to show and interact live with both the Mind Map and outline view at the same time.

The outline view shows the text on the topics, but strips it down to basic formatting so that it is easy to work with in an outline format.

When you select a topic in the outline view, it is selected in the Mind Map and vice versa.

Although the full formatting is not shown on the text in the outline view, when you edit a topic in the outline view, the changes to the text on the topic in the Mind Map will honor the formatting that’s already there. This makes the outline view a very powerful editing tool.

If you want to rearrange your Mind Map from the outline view, you can select one or multiple topics, and then cut, copy, paste, or drag to graft the topics. If you want to select a number of topics, you can either hold the Ctrl key to select individual topics, or the Shift key to select all the topics between your start and end topic.

If you are working in the outline view and want to graft the item to a topic you can see in your Mind Map, you can just drag it on to the Mind Map. And the same works the other way – you can drag from the Mind Map on to the outline view to graft there. In both directions, or when dragging within the outline view, you can press the Ctrl key to copy the topics instead of moving them to the new location.

There are a lot of options available in the context menu for the outline view, so when you right click, you will see options to move the selected topics left, right, up and down, as well as indent and outdent. There is also an option to group the selected topics, which takes the selected topics and makes them all children of a new topic, and the option to ungroup, which does the reverse and flattens the hierarchy.

You will also see the options to expand and collapse completely, which operate on all the subtopics of the selected topics, so you can expand or contract the entire hierarchy from there. There are options for expanding and collapsing all, which expands or collapses all the topics in the outline view. Note that expanding and collapsing topics in the outline view does not affect their expanded or collapsed state in the Mind Map itself – just what you see in the outline view.

With all these options, NovaMind has all the power of an outlining program combined with the visual layout of a Mind Mapping program.

 

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Checkboxes

This video teaches you all about the advanced checkbox options available in NovaMind 5 for Windows, including automatic and manual checkboxes.

 

Here is the transcript:

NovaMind 5 has a unique and powerful checkbox system.

You can show checkboxes on the topics of your Mind Map. Just select the topics you want checkboxes added to, and click the Format/Checkbox button. All checkboxes are three state checkboxes, meaning that they can be checked, unchecked, or in an indeterminate state, which is used to show that a task is partially done.

There are two types of checkboxes: Automatic and Manual checkboxes. By default, all checkboxes are automatic. Automatic checkboxes get their checked state by accumulating the state of the checkboxes on their subtopics. Manual checkboxes are completely independent of their subtopics. Automatic checkboxes are square, and manual checkboxes are round.

While it is possible to mix automatic and manual checkboxes, in most cases, it is best to stick with one type, especially within one subtree.

When you are using the default automatic checkboxes, when you alter the checked state of a parent topic, it will affect its subtopics.

If you collapse subtopics, the parent topic will still show the checked state of all the subtopics.

If you have a gap in the hierarchy of checkboxes, then the inheritance of automatic checkbox state is broken, so if you have a parent with an automatic checkbox on it, no checkbox on the selected topic, and checkboxes on the subtopics, then the checkbox on the parent will not be affected by the state of the children, and nor will changing its checked state affect the subtopics.

 

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Attachments and Hyperlinks

This video teaches you all about attachments (which embed files in your NovaMind document), and attachments (that link to other documents either locally or over the Internet).

 

Here is a transcript:

In this video, I’ll teach you about Attachments and Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks can either be to web addresses, which typically start with http://, or you can link to files on your local disk. If you drag a file on to a topic, you will be asked whether you want to add it as a hyperlink, or embed it as an attachment.

If you are working on the same machine all the time and have the files in the same locations, you may well want to use hyperlinks, because you can easily edit those files without having to have NovaMind running, and when you open the link, it will open the file directly from its native location. But if you are going to be sharing your work with someone else on a different computer, you may well want to attach the file, so that it becomes part of the NovaMind file.

Please be aware that attaching the files to the NovaMind document will increase the size of the NovaMind file, so you probably won’t want to embed things like movies that are hundreds of megabytes in size.

As well as being able to attach files by dragging them on to a topic, you can use the Insert/Attachment ribbon bar command, which will use an open dialog for you to select the file to attach.

You can also drag URLs directly from the address bar of most browsers on to the topic to create a hyperlink.

You can have as many hyperlinks and attachments on each topic as you like. You will see the icon below the right end of the topic, and when you mouse over it, you will see all the hyperlinks or attachments. You can edit the displayed name by using the pencil icon, and typing the new name.

With an attachment, you can either open it in its default application by clicking on its link, or copy it to somewhere else on your hard drive. If you choose to open it, and then make changes to it, and save the changes while it is still open in NovaMind, those changes will be reflected in the NovaMind file because you are editing the file inside the NovaMind file. If you choose to copy the file to some other folder, any changes you subsequently make to the copied out version of the file will not be reflected in the file attached in the NovaMind document.

 

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How to make your topics look great

This video teaches you how to use both the automatic and manual coloring and advanced formatting settings to make your topics look great. It also shows you a number of tips for images, adornments, and topic shapes.

 

Here is the transcript: In this video, I’d like to show you how to make your topics look great

One way to make your Mind Maps look interesting is by using the Automatic Coloring. You can choose from one of the default settings, or open the advanced settings to make finer grained alterations, like setting the rainbow coloring angle, saturation and brightness, or using the alternating rainbow coloring to ensure contrast between the topic colors.

To make it more interesting, or if you want to convey different ideas for different topic relationships, you can change the connection type as well.

The basic topic shapes give you some flexibility of choice of topic shape, but it is often worthwhile to open up the advanced settings, and use the detailed shape settings for things such as rounded rectangles and chamfered rectangle shapes, because you can alter the look of the topics significantly using different corner amounts.

You can style the shapes in different ways using the gallery of shape styles which are generated based on the themed colors and other style settings. This is just a convenient means of setting a number of options all at once to give an aesthetically pleasing result.

If you want to have finer grained control though, you can use the settings for the fill color and line color. We recommend you stick with the themed colors where possible so you can change to a different color set, and it will still look good.

However, if you want to take control with custom coloring, you can use the color chooser, which lets you both choose any color and shade, and adjust the transparency to create some interesting effects. You can also use the red, green, blue, and alpha sliders to pick a color, or enter values in the range 0 to 255 if you know the exact color values you need.

To make the topics look more interesting, you can either drag on images directly from the file explorer, or you can use the built in media library.

We do provide a a huge number of images for you to use from within the NovaMind media library, and we will be adding to the number of libraries available for download over time, but to get started, you should download the Initial Library. This is quite a large file, containing over 3,000 images, so it will probably take a few minutes to download, but once you have started the download, you can carry on your Mind Mapping, while it completes the download and installs itself in the background.

You will see that there are two categories of images there: Adornments and Images. The adornments are special images that will automatically go on the left end of the topic, and are used as visual indicators of a particular meaning. You can have as many adornments on a topic as you like – just drag them on, and drag them to reorder them. To remove an adornment, just drag it off the topic.

If you want to move an adornment from one topic to another, just drag it on to the other topic. If you want to copy an adornment on to another topic while leaving a the original where it was, hold the Ctrl key down while dragging the adornment. You can even use this method while dragging on to the same topic to make a copy of the adornment on the same topic.

To find images to put on your topics, you can type a keyword in to the media library search field. We have tried to tag the images in as many ways as possible, so you can find them by color, by emotion, by usage, by type of image, and other relevant keywords. For instance you could search for “green” and find all the green objects, or “happy”, or “cartoon”, or “photo”. But if you are not sure what to search for, you also have the option of just browsing the images, or just a subset by selecting the categories you are interested in.

The Images can be dragged on to the topics, and you can have up to four images on each topic. Just drag an image on and drop it in the quadrant you want it. If there was already an image in that position, it will be replaced with the new one. If you want to move an image to another topic or another quadrant of the same topic, just click it to select it, and drag it to where you want it. If you want to copy it instead of moving it, hold the Ctrl key down while you drag it.

You can resize the image by dragging the two edges that have resize handles on them, so you can adjust it in relation to the edge of the topic or relative to the text. When you first add an image, it will be scaled to fit the space that you have available for it, but if you right click the image, you will see the options for scaling it to fill the available space, or stretching to fill the space.

Normally, the program will impose a minimum size on images so they are easily visible, so if you want to do something like create a bordered topic with an image at the top and bottom, then you would need to start with an image that is small in that dimension already. For instance, if I wanted to format a topic so it had a top and bottom border, I would select an image that was already the height I wanted, put it on the top and bottom of the topic, and then tell it to stretch to fill the space available.

If you want to delete an image from a topic, just select the image so that the image resizing handles are showing, and press the delete key.

You can resize your topics by dragging the resize handles. Once you have resized a topic, you will see lock icons that indicate that you have locked their size and are not using the automatic sizing for the topic any more. If you want to revert to automatic sizing, click the lock icon to unlock it again.

 

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Here is a transcript:

To add a new topic as a sibling of the topic you have selected, press Enter. To add a sibling above the selected topic, press Shift+Enter. To add a sub-topic, press Insert.

Normally, you will just have one central topic, and all the sub-topics as descendants of it, and if you need another Mind Map, it will be on another canvas, but occasionally you may need to add a floating topic that is not connected to the main Mind Map at all. This is accomplished using floating topics. To add a floating topic, select the home tab Insert Topic popup menu, and choose to add a floating topic.

You should be aware that although floating topics look like other Mind Maps on the same canvas, they are different in several important ways. They are not included as part of the normal outline of topics, and are instead added on at the end of the outline. They are also secondary as far as layout is concerned, and if the actual Mind Map bumps into a floating topic or any of its descendant topics, the floating topic will be pushed out of the way.

Callouts are a way of annotating topics by an item that is visually connected to the main topic, for instance like a speech bubble. To add a callout, select the topic you want to add it to, and use the Insert/Callout option on the ribbon. When it comes to arranging the Mind Map, the sub-topics will have precedence and push the callouts out of the way if necessary. Callouts can have subtopics, callouts and shapes attached to them, just like an ordinary topic.

To visually group topics, you can insert a boundary around them. Just select the topic, and use the Insert/Boundary option. Boundaries are also a good way of spacing out groups of items without needing to manually move topics. The advanced boundary formatting options include a number of different shapes as well as the ability to set the margin between the topics and the boundary to add to the visual separation.

Shapes are a unique feature of NovaMind, and allow you to add shapes or images that are attached to topics but not part of them. On the insert menu, you will see the types of shape you can add.

Shapes give you a lot of flexibility of layout with a topic, because you are not limited to just staying within the confines of the topic shape. Instead, you can add the shapes so that they overlap the topic, and be either in front of or behind the topic, adding visual interest. You can also include text on any of the shapes, so you can have visual annotations for your topics.

Shapes normally push other topics out of the way (apart from the one it is attached to), but if you want to, you can use the context menu, and under the Layout option, there is an option to ignore the shape when doing layout. When you select this option, it will not push the other topics out of the way, and you can have a shape that is behind or in front of a number of topics. This gives you a massive amount of flexibility of layout for your Mind Map.

Note that if the shape is inside a boundary, it will still push the boundary out (this is so that you have added flexibility with the combination of shapes and boundaries), so if you have boundaries, and you want a shape that is completely independent of this, then you could attach it to either a parent topic or the Mind Map title. Of course, if you do this, then you are effectively saying “I’m taking over the positioning of this shape, and if the other topics move in relationship to it, you may need to move it manually to where you want it.

 

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This video is an introduction to NovaMind 5, and shows you the basics of how to create a Mind Map using NovaMind 5 for Windows.

It shows: The overall user interface, adding topics, using the themes and color sets, Mind Map layout and moving topics around, automatic coloring and topic style options, the media library, adding adornments and images, resizing topics, and topic notes.

Further, more detailed tutorials will cover these topics in depth, but this tutorial is everything you need to get started.

A transcript of the video follows:

In this video, I’d like to help you to get started using NovaMind 5 for Windows.

When you start up NovaMind, it will look like this.

At the top, you have the ribbon bar, with tabs for the different options, a getting started panel, and until you have entered your license key, you will have the trial ribbon on the left.

Let’s start with the Getting Started panel. When you click on the Introduction video button, it will allow you to watch videos to help you understand NovaMind 5 and get started using it quickly. When you click on Welcome Mind Map, it will open a Mind Map that tells you about a lot of the features of NovaMind 5, as well as some of the important shortcut keys, so that’s definitely worth a look.

But for the moment, let’s just get started with our first Mind Map.

We make it really easy to get started, because when NovaMind starts up, your first Mind Map is already created and the title selected, so all you need to do is to start typing. Notice that even if you haven’t closed the Getting Started panel, it will be put away automatically when you start your Mind Map, but if you want to see it again at any time, you can access it through the Help menu.

When you have put in your text, just press Enter to finish editing.

To add a sub-topic, press Insert. To add a new topic as a sibling of the topic you have selected, press Enter. To add a sibling above the selected topic, press Shift+Enter.

When you add anything to a Mind Map, the colors, fonts, and styling of the object are defined by the theme you are using at the time. If you want to change the overall look of the Mind Map, you can select a different theme. If you have changed any formatting to be different to what is used in the theme, then your custom formatting will be honored when you change themes. Wherever you see an option to reset the formatting to the default, it will remove the custom setting you have applied and revert to whatever the theme defines for the selected item. If the theme doesn’t define anything specific, in many cases the option will be inherited from its parent topic.

You can change the overall coloring of the Mind Map by selecting a different color set. Any colors that are set using the themed colors will be changed to their equivalent in the new color set, ensuring that the colors still go well together and have the same relative intensity.

You can alter the layout of the Mind Map by selecting a topic that you want to lay out the children of, and choosing a layout option. Quite often you will want to use the radial layout for the first level topics and linear layout for the subtopics, but it’s up to you – the layout settings can be changed individually on any topic.

You can set the angle that the subtopics are laid out at using the angle control. If you click on one of the quadrants, it will rotate the axes to be either vertical or horizontal in that direction, but if you want it to be laid out at another angle, just drag it to be the angle you want.

In most cases, the automatic layout of the topics should be everything you require, but occasionally you may want to move a topic to a specific location. To do this, just mouse over the topic and you will see both the graft and move controls. To move the topic to another place, drag it using the move icon with the four arrows on it. To put it back into its automatically laid out position, use the Reset Location option. If you want to move all the subtopics of a topic back to their default locations, use the Arrange Sub-topics option.

You can use the Automatic Coloring to make your subtopics look good. Just select the option you want, and any subtopics that don’t have their coloring manually set will use the automatically calculated color. This allows you to make interesting looking, colorful Mind Maps with a minimum of effort.

You can style the shapes in different ways using the gallery of shape styles which are generated based on the themed colors and other style settings. This is just a convenient means of setting a number of options all at once to give an aesthetically pleasing result.

If you want to have finer grained control, you can use the settings for the fill and line. We recommend you stick with the themed colors where possible so you can change to a different color set, and it will still look good.

To make the topics look more interesting, you can either drag on images directly from the file explorer, or you can use the built in media library.

We do provide a a huge number of images for you to use from within the NovaMind media library, and we will be adding to the number of libraries available for download over time, but to get started, you should download the Initial Library. This contains over 3,000 images and is therefore quite a large file, and will probably take a few minutes to download, but once you have started the download, you can carry on your Mind Mapping, while it completes the download and installs itself in the background.

You will see that there are two categories of images there: Adornments and Images. The adornments are special images that will automatically go on the left end of the topic, and are used as a visual indicator of a particular meaning. You can have as many adornments on a topic as you like – just drag them on, and you can drag them to reorder them. To remove an adornment, just drag it off the topic.

The Images can be dragged on to the topics, and you can have up to four images on each topic. Just drag an image on and drop it in the quadrant you want it.

As you build your Mind Map, you are bound to need to graft topics from one place on the Mind Map to another. To do this, drag the topic by its graft handle. If you have multiple topics selected, they will all be grafted in the graft operation. The indicator will show you where the topics will be attached when you drop them, so you can easily see what the effect will be. If you want to create a copy of the topics, you can hold the Ctrl key down while you drag the topics. You also have cut, copy, and paste available if you prefer that method of working with your topics.

You should be aware that if you are using the radial layout, there are topics on the left and the right of the parent topic, and if you just move a topic, it will still be laid out as if it was on the side it was attached to, so if you want to swap it to the other side, you will need to graft it from one side to the other. This gives you a lot of flexibility in the way the subtopics are laid out in relation to their parents.

You can resize your topics by dragging the resize handles. Once you have resized a topic, you will see lock icons that indicate that you have locked their size and are not using the automatic sizing for the topic any more. If you want to revert to automatic sizing, click the lock icon.

Often you will need to add more information than you would have just with the keywords on the topics, and this is done using the topic notes. You enter the notes by selecting a single topic on the Map and displaying the notes sidebar panel.

With this basic information, you have everything you need to create your Mind Maps, but of course there are a lot of powerful features and options that we have not touched on in this overview. For in depth information on these topics, please see the detailed tutorial videos.

 

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Mind Mapping is a powerful tool for all forms of planning, and we have already seen how we can use it for project planning, but let’s extend that to talk specifically about strategic planning.

This video references a number of Mind Maps that you can download from NovaMind Connect, so here are the specific links so you can download the Mind Maps:

Strategic planning: why do it?, SWOT analysis, Strategic plans: what do they contain?

Business continuity planning, response and recovery

Strategic planning can seem like a hassle when you just want to get on and run the business, but there are a lot of reasons for creating strategic plans, as you can see here:

• they are very important for setting the long term direction of the company so you know what the company will look like in 5 or 10 years
• they form a framework for decision making when you are doing your business planning
• they are a framework for your operational planning and help you set your priorities, product lines, levels of service, and identify your target market
• they enable you to very clearly explain the business to employees, contractors, stakeholders in the business, strategic partners, and customers
• they allow you to get a clear picture of the difference between your current position and where you want to be long term, and therefore stimulate change in the right direction
• and they form a basis for accountability of both the staff (especially senior staff) and the plans you make at lower levels, like business and marketing plans.

So what should the strategic plans contain? Here is a list of some of the main items:

• the vision of where the company is going in the medium to long term
• the mission of the company – what it is all about
• the values of the company, explaining why you exist
• your specific objectives as a company
• what strategies you will use to achieve your objectives
• and the goals along the way, so you can plan to meet those goals and be able to measure your progress

For your strategic plan, you could start with a Mind Map with the main headings as in the example in the video and add sub-branches for each element, but you would probably end up with a huge Mind Map, so what I would suggest is that you download this Mind Map from NovaMind Connect, and for each of the top level branches, decide what is important for you and adjust the second level branches to suit your needs, and then for each top level branch, use the “new map from branch” option to create a new Mind Map for each of them, and then brainstorm the details under what have now become the first level branches of the detail maps.

One important part of the strategic planning process is doing a SWOT analysis, where you identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your business. Using more traditional methods of doing SWOT analysis, you just consider all the strengths first, and then all the weaknesses and so on. One of the advantages of doing this using Mind Maps is that you can be open to use brainstorming techniques where you come up with ideas that relate to all four areas in any order, and you can attach them to the Mind Map as branches at the appropriate place as you think of them.

We do have a SWOT template built in to NovaMind so you can create a Mind Map based on that template, but there’s also this extended SWOT analysis template available on NovaMind Connect, which may help direct your thinking in appropriate directions for strategic and business planning.

When you have gone through the strategic planning process and identified the detailed vision, mission, values, objectives, strategies and goals, it is often useful to feed the main points back to an overall strategic plan Mind Map which you can then make into a poster for your office, and can also include with a company prospectus or bids for contracts etc. This helps everyone within the company or associated with the company in any way understand what the company is all about, and where they fit in to the accomplishment of those objectives.

Another specific strategic thing to consider is business continuity planning. Using a Mind Map such as this, again the brainstorming structure of Mind Maps comes in handy to take these ideas and build out a picture of the risks that your business faces, and then build a risk mitigation plan.

Then at the other end of the spectrum, you have the response and recovery plan and here we can use the same techniques we used for project planning and management, to ensure that everyone understands the objectives, their roles and responsibilities, and how to effect a speedy recovery from any disaster. It is at times like that, that you need to have the clear and efficient communication that is provided by Mind Maps.

So as you can see, using Mind Maps for strategic planning helps make sure all aspects of the plan are dealt with properly, in a way that everyone can understand what the strategic direction of the company is, and how you are going to achieve it.

Now the next obvious thing to be doing with Mind Maps is business planning, so we will cover that in the next video.

 

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