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Organizational Chart Tutorial
HOW TO DRAW ORGANIZATIONAL CHARTS
What are Organizational Charts?
Organizational charts, also known as organization charts, are tree
diagrams that illustrate the relationships among personnel,
departments, or divisions in an organization.
They are drawn as either horizontal or vertical trees with labeled geometric shapes representing staff or business units.
SmartDraw is uniquely suited to help you create perfect org charts in just minutes. With the help of easy-to-use SmartPanels, intuitive tools, and powerful data import functions, you'll never want to work with anything else!
Basic Organization Chart Shapes
The basic shapes required to make an organizational chart include
basic geometric shapes and connecting lines as illustrated below.
The rectangle is the most common shape used to represent a person or a department.
A dashed outline denotes an open position.
Doubly-linked boxes indicate co-supervisors.
A divided box can indicate job sharing or dual responsibilities.
A solid line indicates a formal and direct relationship.
A dashed line indicates an indirect or advisory relationship.
Arrows indicate the direction of communication.
Most organizational charts are based on a horizontal tree structure like this one.
The columnal stack creates a more compact tree structure.
The staggered tree is also used to save space.
A horizontal attachment outside of the vertical hierarchy indicates a staff or assistant position.
The list style saves space by eliminating boxes.
These are two alternative ways to represent multiple personnel without showing them all.
Organizational Chart Terminology
In the following tutorial we will refer to parts of the organizational chart
using the terms below:
