Create a BPMN Diagram in the Visual Designer

On Dragon1, you can create BPMN diagrams. These diagrams are suitable for modeling business processes. This page is a tutorial for creating a simple BPMN diagram or in other words a process model.

What is BPMN?

BPMN is the world standard for modeling business processes. OMG is the owner of the specification. BPMN is an open-source (free of charge) modeling language.

How To Create BPMN Diagrams

To create a BPMN diagram with the preselected BPMN Shapes in the Visual Designer:

  • Click on 'Select Diagram Type' at the top of the Shapes Panel at the right (under the Explorer Treeview)
  • Select diagram type 'Process Diagram - BPMN'
  • Now you see the basic set of BPMN Shapes
  • Drag a lane to the canvas and size it
  • Draw a start and stop event to the canvas, select the shapes, and name them (go to the Inspector, expand the Text Attributes panel, and enter a title for the shape in the Name field)
  • Drag a few tasks to the canvas and name them
  • Drag a few decisions to the canvas and name them
  • Connect the shapes with links by selecting a shape and using the Arrow smart tool to drag a link to another shape

BPMN Diagram Step 1 - 5

bpmn diagram lanes

Screenshot of drawing the lanes.

bpmn diagram events

Screenshot of drawing the start and stop events.

bpmn diagram tasks

Screenshot of drawing the tasks.

dragon1 bpmn diagram decisions

Screenshot of drawing the decisions.

dragon1 bpmn diagram

Screenshot of drawing annotations and relationships.

BPMN as Open Standard

OMG

The Object Management Group® (OMG®) is the international not-for-profit standards consortium. OMG has standards that are driven by end-users, vendors, government agencies, and academic institutions. OMG develops standards for a wide range of technologies. Three well-known standards of OMG are the Unified Modeling Language® (UML®), Model-Driven Architecture® (MDA®) and the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN®).

BPMN 2.0 Specification

Here is a link to the official specification of the open standard: BPMN Specification 2.0.

Extra BPMN Features

Extra features for BPMN are:

  • Import diagrams from Visio
  • Import .bpmn and .xpdl format
  • Make the diagrams interactive
  • A wizard guides you in creating BPMN Diagrams

XPDL

Next to BPMN also XPDL is available.

XPDL is a file format to store all details of the BPMN process definition notation, including graphical descriptions of the diagram, and also executable properties.

In XPDL you store a process in high definition, without any loss, and another product can import it to reproduce it as the same diagram.

Here is a link to the XPDL Org website: http://xpdl.org