SmartDraw's Open API
The SmartDraw Open API allows you to create extensions that let you skip the drawing process and generate diagrams from data automatically.
What Makes SmartDraw's API Easy
Other diagramming API's, like Visio's for example, require you to specify the coordinates of every shape and line in the diagram. This makes generating a diagram with code tedious and complex.
The SmartDraw API is very different because it leverages SmartDraw's intelligent formatting engine, the ability to automatically format and connect shapes on a page based on their relationships.
The VisualScript SDK provides an object model that allows a developer to build an extension that turns data into diagrams for SmartDraw.
It is the foundation of SmartDraw's Open API. It's easy to use because it leverages SmartDraw's intelligent formatting to make specifying a tree or a flow as simple as specifying the parents and children. No positioning information is needed because the intelligent formatting engine knows how to lay them out perfectly on the page.
This simple JavaScript is rendered as an org chart:
{
var vs = new VS.Document(); //Create a new VisualScript document
var theShape= vs.GetTheShape();
var myConnector=theShape.AddShapeConnector(VS.ShapeConnectorTypes.OrgChart); //add the org chart connector to the top shape
myConnector.AddShape(); //add the first shape to the connector
myConnector.AddShape(); //add the second shape to the connector
}
Without this power it would not be practical to generate the kind of diagrams you need with code.
