Software

Creating mindmaps with Freemind

Mindmapping is a method of taking notes using semantic links… mapping out the relationships between terms and concepts in the same way your mind does when recalling information. We had a brief look at mindmapping in this post and, as promised, here is the first of two pieces of software designed to make mindmapping easy: Freemind.

First thing’s first… what systems can you run Freemind on? Freemind is written in Java, and comes in platform-secific packages for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and eComStation, as well as generic binaries for running on any system with the Java Runtime Environment installed. So now that you know you can run it (or are you going to stop reading here?), what’s it like?

Doctor Who in mindmap form.

On starting Freemind you are presented with a grey oval - just click on it and type in your starting point. For the sake of this test I created a quick mindmap of what I could remember of Doctor Who (please, for any whovians out there… it’s not a complete overview, I’m only testing software!). Having the central point selected and then pressing tab creates a new branch (child node) which, after entering your text, is selected so that you can continue down the branch if you wish. Alternatively, pressing return when a node is selected will create a “sibling”. This creates another branch on the same level as the one you had selected, so it isn’t available for the starting point.

These are the only things you need to know to create a basic mindmap: how to start, and how to add branches. But if you want to go a bit further there are some features that will allow you to do so. If something doesn’t fit neatly into one branch, you can either map it twice or create a link between branches. On the example above, you will see a point where one branch links with another (fighting against the Daleks -> The Daleks). I would not recommend making use of this too frequently as it can make a mindmap confusing, but if the need arises the ability is there. Simply select the two nodes you want to link, and select Insert -> Add Graphical Link. You can also add icons, hyperlinks, and longer notes to nodes. Finally, if you want to group a bunch of nodes together, you can select them and choose Insert -> Cloud to put a cloud-like border around them.

The same mindmap, but with Automatic Layout applied.

While creating a mindmap in Freemind is very easy, it doesn’t look very good at the minute. Fear not - auto-formatting will come to the rescue! Simply select Format -> Automatic Layout and you go from the grey mindmap above to a rather more colourful one.

Is there anything not to like about Freemind then? A few niggles, but nothing too serious:

1. File types - when you click on a Word document, Word opens up and loads that document. However, when I click on a Freemind file, Freemind opens up and tries to load the last mindmap I worked on. It’s not a fatal problem, but it is a little annoying.
2. The load/save dialogue doesn’t let me access every part of the computer. I can get into the home directory, my user directory, or the hard disk, but I can’t get into my USB drive because it’s not listed in the default locations and there isn’t an option to search for other directories. This one is a little more serious. It has to be said, though, that I’m on my mac at the moment and this might be different on other platforms.

Overall, and despite these niggles, Freemind is an easy to use, quick way of creating a mindmap. It’s also free, which is always a bonus! Give it a go, and stay tuned for the next piece of mindmapping software.

Other posts in this series:

• Take effective notes with mindmaps
• Creating mindmaps with Mind42
• Creating mindmaps with Mindnode

Related reading (auto-generated):

• Creating mindmaps with Mindnode
• Creating mindmaps with Mind42.com
• Take effective notes with mindmaps
• Remember Everything with Evernote

Tags: Freemind, Java, Mindmap, Notes

Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed to read more like it.