While formulating, manipulating and solving small flowgraphs on paper is straightforward and insightful, it's very helpful to have a patient and capable machine assistant to remove the drudgery, avoid mistakes and save on paper.
Click on the link below for a computer application which enables flowgraph modelling from a web browser (please note that at present it works best with MS Internet Explorer).
The Java applet may take a few moments to load. Once the blank worksheet has appeared with its grey toolbar you can start by double-clicking in the blank area to create the first node. Doubleclick elsewhere to create a second node and connect them by cntrl-click-drag (Mac) or rightclick-drag (PC).
The Appendix of the book Macroeconomic Models in a Causal Framework provides a brief description of how to use this tool, and this can be downloaded as a pdf file: download Appendix (88Kb).
Note that the graphs you create cannot be saved or copied as manipulatable objects, though you can save them, frozen, as picture files with a screen- or window-capture utility - i.e. in Windows use the PrintScreen or Cntrl-PrintScreen command from the keyboard, or in Mac OSX use the "Grab" application.
The picture can then be pasted into another application like a paint program or a word processor. To print out, again use a screen- or window-capture utility.
To avoid losing your work it's best to open it in a new window of your browser.
Acknowledgement: the Java applet was created by Thomas K. Wyatt.