Take a Tour of IdeaWeaver

This page offers a general overview of the main IdeaWeaver window.

If you have high-speed Internet access, please check out our Free Training Videos page to see the program in action.

This screen capture shows the main IdeaWeaver screen. A description of each pane is below.

IdeaWeaver Main Screen Layout

The IdeaWeaver screen has three main work panes. You can resize the panes vertically and horizontally to customize your view.

• The Classification pane on the left lets you add, edit, and delete categories and topics for your ideas. You can drag an idea to a category or a topic to create an association.
• The Idea Workbook pane in the center lets you add, edit, and delete your ideas. The lower portion of the pane shows a preview of the currently selected idea. Additional tabs in the preview area let you easily see the topics and headings to which the idea is assigned.
• The Outline pane on the right lets you add, edit, delete, and arrange headings. You can drag an idea from the Idea Workbook over to the outline and place it under an appropriate heading. When you export your project to RTF, the outline controls which headings and ideas are included in the export file.

Dump Your Highlighters and Post Its!

With the index card approach, you might have used highlighters or sticky notes to help keep track of the topics you have covered in a particular piles of papers. IdeaWeaver has "virtual" equivalents.

In IdeaWeaver, using the Classification Pane you can assign an infinite number of topics to an idea with just a click of the mouse. With Topics you can relate your ideas many different ways, no matter how they will be organized in the final document. By viewing your ideas by topics, you can see everything you've covered.

Of course when you are writing, you don't want to plagiarize, so you need to be sure to keep your research separate from your original writing. In IdeaWeaver, you use the Category feature to group ideas by type. So you can associate all your background research with a category called "Research" which you can sort and work with it later. If you don't include these ideas in the outline, they don't end up in the final document.

Organize Your Ideas

In the Outline pane, you can add as many (or as few) of your ideas into your outline for the final document.

You can reorganize your ideas and group them under headings quickly and easily. When you're done, you can export the outline for use in your word processor.

IdeaWeaver works for both large and small projects. For example, book authors often have to keep track of "back story," timeline, or character information, which may never appear in the finished manuscript but is important to keep track of and remember. With IdeaWeaver, you can separate this type of background information from ideas and text that contributes to the final content.

Work Your Way

IdeaWeaver lets you decide what you want to use for categories, topics, and headings. You can set them all up in advance, or you can create them as you enter new ideas, or you can wait until you are done entering ideas.

In fact, you don't have to use categories or topics at all, if you prefer not to. (Check out our Case Studies to get a glimpse at a few "real world" projects.)

One of IdeaWeaver's time-saving features is the ability to create a new project using the elements of an existing project. You choose whether you want to copy just the categories, just the topics, just the headings, any combination, or all three. For example, if you do a monthly newsletter, you can use the same outline from month-to-month.

Free Your Mind for Free

Try IdeaWeaver on your next project. You can use a fully-functional version of the software free for 30 days, so you can experience the benefits first-hand with no risk. Once you discover how IdeaWeaver frees your mind and unlocks your creativity, you won't want to go back to a blank page ever again.