Calculator
Network diagram project management calculator — Malaysia
Paste your tasks and dependencies. It draws the network, highlights the critical path, and puts float on every node.
Nodes are positioned by earliest start, so the horizontal axis is time and the picture cannot disagree with the arithmetic. Blue nodes and arrows have zero float and form the critical path. The diagram scrolls sideways rather than shrinking, so a wide network stays readable.
Reading the diagram
Each box is a task, showing its ID, duration and either its float or the word critical. Arrows run from a task to the ones that depend on it.
Nodes are positioned by earliest start, so the horizontal axis is time. That is a deliberate choice over a prettier automatic layout: it means the picture cannot contradict the arithmetic behind it.
Blue boxes and arrows have zero float and form the critical path. Where two chains both show blue, the project has more than one critical path — which is common and means there is less room to manoeuvre than a single chain would suggest.
The diagram scrolls sideways rather than shrinking to fit, because a network squeezed to page width stops being readable at exactly the size where you need it.
What a network diagram is actually good for
Finding the dependency nobody had written down. The moment a list of tasks becomes a picture, the arrow that should exist and does not tends to be obvious to whoever knows the work.
Settling arguments about sequence. Two people describing the same project verbally often disagree without realising; a drawing makes the disagreement visible in seconds.
Seeing where the network is fragile. A long chain with no parallel paths has no absorption — every delay propagates the full distance — and that is a structural property you can see and cannot easily compute.
It is less useful for tracking. Once work is under way, a network diagram ages badly and a simple list of what finished against what was promised tells you more.
Questions
›What is a project network diagram?
A drawing of tasks and the dependencies between them, used to work out the sequence, the total duration and which tasks are critical.
This one uses activity-on-node: each box is a task and each arrow is a dependency. The older activity-on-arrow style is largely historical.
›How is the critical path shown?
Tasks with zero float are drawn in blue, as are the arrows between two critical tasks.
A project can have more than one critical path, and it can move during delivery as actual durations change.
›What format should I paste?
One task per line: ID, name, days, and what it depends on — for example A, Design, 8, B.
The depends-on field can list several IDs separated by commas or spaces. Leave it empty for tasks that can start immediately.
›Can I export the diagram?
Not as a file. Take a screenshot — for the planning conversations this is built for, that is usually what happens anyway.
If you need a maintained diagram inside a live plan, that belongs in scheduling software rather than a web tool.
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