I have always used Appleworks Drawing for making the frames and grid for my lesson plans. Any suggestions of what to use now?

Question

Please help!

Answer 1

This depends on whether you need to open previously created AppleWorks documents. The only programs which can do this are EazyDraw (right) and Intaglio (though when I tested the demo it wouldn't open complex drawings such as the one below). If you are dealing with complex technical drawings EazyDraw is probably the best choice: it's about the same cost as the whole of iWork (when downloaded, and rather more expensive on a CD), but cheaper than some other vector based programs, and seems to handle the whole process well - though it does operate somewhat differently from AppleWorks. There is a much cheaper version available on the Mac App Store, but note that it does not open AppleWorks Draw Documents: neither does the latest version from their website (4.1.x) - for this you need 4.0.x 'Retro', also available from the website.
If you are only concerned with making new documents, then you can do a certain amount in Pages: but a better bet might be Swift Publisher 2, which is a layout program with a library of clip-art. I use it in preference to Pages for layout, though not for word processing - it isn't really designed for that.
EasyDraw is also a powerful drawing program: if you're not concerned with opening old AppleWorks documents the version from the Mac App Store is the one to go for.