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Freemind Tutorial PDF
Freemind Tutorial PDF
Freemind
Copyright © 2008‐2009 Presage Technologies, LLC.
You may freely distribute or publish this content provided you publish the
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Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................... 5
Creating a New Mindmap .................................................................. 6
Inserting Child Nodes ....................................................................... 6
Inserting Sibling Nodes .................................................................... 7
Adding Hyperlinks............................................................................. 8
Linking Two Nodes.......................................................................... 10
Inserting a Note.............................................................................. 12
Formatting Nodes in Clouds ............................................................ 13
Formatting a Mindmap .................................................................... 15
Exporting a Mindmap ...................................................................... 17
Resources ....................................................................................... 18
Introduction
If you’re still wondering what the big excitement is about mind-mapping, it’s
probably because you’ve never tried Freemind. Freemind, besides being free,
gives you an incredible range of capabilities that go far beyond just
brainstorming. Of course, if you want to brainstorm, Freemind has everything
you could hope for in a creativity tool. But, Freemind doesn’t stop there. With
its ability to embed links, dates, and files, Freemind becomes the perfect tool
for research, project planning, and for documenting things like your network
or your system resources.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn some of the basics of using Freemind. Although
you’ll learn even more when you dive in and play with the tool yourself, this
tutorial will help you learn more about:
NOTE: A note on terminology. The terms “mindmap” and “mind map” tend
to be used interchangeably, not only on the Web, but within many mind
mapping applications themselves. In this tutorial, the variant you’ll see most
often is “mind map” in two words. Freemind features often include the single
word variant, so you may see those in headings or in descriptions of specific
commands.
Now you’ve created a basic mind map. Next, you’ll add child and sibling
nodes to the mind map and begin to build the details of your project.
1. Click the light bulb icon in the main toolbar. You can also select Insert >
New Child Node from the main menu, or press the Insert key on your
keyboard, if you have one.
2. Type the name of your node. For example, type “Interview dept heads.”
3. Repeat the previous two steps to add more child nodes.
4. To add a child node to one of your child nodes, select the child node, for
instance, the “Interview dept heads” node, and then click the light bulb icon
again. This time, the node will appear to the side of the currently selected
node.
If you have child nodes with child nodes, you’ll likely want to add sibling
nodes too. Keep reading to find out more about sibling nodes.
You can select any node and add child or sibling nodes to accommodate as
many details as you want to capture. If your ideas or plans are equivalent to
the main child nodes, such as “Calculate sizing data” in this example, then
select the “Build Network” oval and insert a new child node.
Adding Hyperlinks
The ability to add hyperlinks is one of the most powerful features of
Freemind. You can link to documents, websites, and to other types of local
files.
To add a hyperlink:
1. Click one of the nodes to select it. For example, click the “Create preliminary
design” node.
2. Right-click and select Insert > Hyperlink (File Chooser). This opens the
file browser dialog.
3. Select a file you want to link to, and then click Open. You may need to
change the file type at the bottom of the file browse dialog to All Files. By
default, the dialog only shows Freemind files. After you link the file, an arrow
appears next to the node containing the link.
4. Click the arrow to open the file.
You can also enter a link manually, if you like. This is especially useful when
you want to link to a known website.
3. Enter the location you want the link to point to. It can be a Web page, an FTP
site, a local network share, or some other external or internal location. In
this case, the hyperlink points to an external Web site.
4. Click OK to save the link.
The black dot next to an item identifies the option that is currently selected.
Next, create a local link between two or more nodes. This type of link, which
will also be indicated by an arrow next to the link, lets you jump from a
clicked link to another node on the map.
This feature is very useful when you have a large mind map that contains
many details. As you’ll find, many items in your mind maps will have some
sort of relationship to other items. Hyperlinking is one way to reinforce those
relationships, visually and functionally.
In the graphic below, the two IP addresses, when clicked, both highlight the
“Engineering” node, indicating that the Engineering department network has
reserved those addresses.
Inserting a Note
As you develop more detailed maps, you’ll most likely want to add notes to
different nodes, either as reminders to yourself or as notes to other
employees who will be viewing the map.
To insert a note:
To create a cloud:
That’s it. You can also format nodes to appear in “bubbles” which are
rounded rectangles. And there are many formatting options available, such
as using any of the many icons Freemind offers to uniquely identify your
nodes.
Formatting a Mindmap
There are many ways in Freemind to format your mind maps and the nodes
and connectors of your mind map. Let’s walk through a few of those
formatting options.
• From the main menu, select Format > Automatic Layout. This sets the
layout for the entire map, as shown below:
2. Right-click and select Format > Bubble. This formats the selected node in a
rounded rectangle. You can also change the color of the border and the
background.
Whenever you add sibling and child nodes to other nodes, Freemind
establishes a toggle feature that allows you to fold and unfold those items to
simplify the view of part or all of the mind map. While not specifically a
formatting function, this feature is good to know about when it comes time to
reviewing or explaining large, detailed maps.
If one or more nodes appear to have a small empty circle to the left of the node
name, that means the node has children or siblings. Click the node to unfold it.
Click a node that contains children or siblings to close it. The small empty circle will
appear next to the main node.
The physical style menu provides a set of pre-defined formats that you can
choose from for your nodes. You can also define your own set of styles by
editing the “patterns.xml” file in your Freemind directory.
Exporting a Mindmap
Freemind lets you export to a variety of formats that make it easy for you to
share your mind maps. You can export to graphics formats, such as JPEG and
PNG, to document formats, like PDF and OpenOffice.org Writer format, or to
HTML and XHTML and XSLT.
The file will open in whatever application you have on your system that
supports the file type you selected.
Resources
For more information about Freemind, see the following resources:
Freemind FAQ
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Asked_questions – Dozens of
common questions and detailed answers about how to install, run, and use
Freemind.
Freemind Accessories
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Forums – Third-party plug-ins
and add-ons for Freemind.