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Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?
What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?
- DanBC 13y agognuplot (http://www.gnuplot.info/ http://www.gnuplot.info/) dia (https://live.gnome.org/Dia https://live.gnome.org/Dia)
- tdec 13y ago- Mindjet Mindmanager for mind mapping - Visio for quick and dirty flowcharts - ARIS for full blown process management exercises
- bdfh42 13y agoA pencil and paper are the superior solution. When you get to show the results to others - just use whatever you are presenting the rest of the message with - almost all "office" type products have sufficient capacity to manage that part. The clever bit is the bit you do by yourself.
- alok-g 13y agoNothing beats pencil and paper. We used to just scan hand-drawn diagrams and insert them into PowerPoint or wherever. Over the time this got accepted as the culture within the group.
- ziko 13y agoDoes anyone have enough expertise to tell me in which program this was made? http://cl.ly/image/1o070d3s2Y0b http://cl.ly/image/1o070d3s2Y0b
- AdamGibbins 13y agoOmniGraffle
- peteretep 13y agoIs a fantastic product, as are the rest of the Omni stable
- neilbowers 13y agoYep, OmniGraffle for me. I've been using it for the last 8 years.
- PavlovsCat 13y agohttp://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html
- alok-g 13y agoSeconding Yed. It is great for making structured diagrams. It is very quick to make good looking diagrams without spending much time on formatting and beautification. User interface is nice and configurable, though a bit counter-intuitive at times. I have been unable to figure how to make free-form diagrams using Yed, so feel sometimes that creativity is hampered.
- onk 13y agoAuto-layout is what makes tools like yEd special. I showed someone recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5vqVgd4KW8&t=2m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5vqVgd4KW8&t=2m10s
- AdamGibbins 13y agoFor ASCII diagrams: http://www.asciiflow.com/ http://www.asciiflow.com/ or http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/ http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/
- dorfsmay 13y agoNeat! Thanks.
- ndcrandall 13y agoI first use paper and pencil, but then I transcribe and keep it up to date electronically. http://lucidchart.com http://lucidchart.com has been my favorite service as it is free for simpler projects and can be upgraded if you need more complexity. I've watched the project grow from an idea, to recruiting developers in my CS classes, to a full blown project which has exceeded my expectations. It's exciting to watch!
- karolisd 13y agoSeconding Lucid Chart. It's great.
- abrichr 13y agoWhat's your process/toolchain for transcription and storage?
- ndcrandall 13y agoMy process is a bit rudimentary. I just have a folder with notebook paper in it. When I need to create a new system or subsytem I will draw it on paper just as it would look in any of these diagraming tools. Once ready I'll use lucidchart to replicate the drawing (schema or flowchart). Once it's implemented in code and committed in Git I will go back to the electronic copy, mark in red or other colors anything that will change in the next refactor or implementation. As I refactor I change the red makrings to black indicating it is now part of the system. The paper becomes an artifact of the first revision. Sometimes I'll break out a new paper and do the initial drawings to test my knowledge of the system and see if I have complicated the design. This system works well for me.
- dmgrow 13y agoAppreciate the callout for Lucidchart. If anyone has any questions or suggestions, happy to help [I work there]. Aside from the standard free account, there are also free Pro accounts for students who use an educational email address: https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/education/students https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/education/students
- oliveratkinson 13y agodefinitely http://www.websequencediagrams.com/ http://www.websequencediagrams.com/, it produces clear results for management and clients
- seivan 13y agoThis is how I think it up in my head, just with words, and end up writing it like that as well. Thanks!
- cdvonstinkpot 13y agoPresently I use LibreOffice Draw, but I've wondered what HN readers use. I'm glad you submitted this thread.
- ziko 13y agoThanks! I think of this topic as rarely discussed but its 'products' are often used.
- fatman 13y agoI started using Dia (http://projects.gnome.org/dia/ http://projects.gnome.org/dia/) when my employer wouldn't spring for Visio. A bit quirky at times, but overall not too bad for simple stuff.
- wolfe 13y agohttp://www.draw.io/ http://www.draw.io/
- pauldelany 13y agohttp://www.sparxsystems.com/products/index.html http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/index.html
- motley 13y agoyEd Graph Editor from yWorks (http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html)
- alok-g 13y agoThis is one of the best I have found: http://www.tentouchapps.com/grafio http://www.tentouchapps.com/grafio It makes good looking diagrams very quickly without hampering creativity. It requires almost no effort on formatting and beautification. I wish they had an app for the desktop. People have requested the same on their forums a few times.
- gnosis 13y agoInkscape, when I want them to look really nice and am willing to put some time in to making them look the way I want. I've also used kivio on occasion, and graphviz, and ploticus. Again, all depending on what I'm after.
- betterunix 13y agoDia
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- russomi 13y agoLucid
- X9E-127 13y agoI use paper. derp.
- torstesu 13y agoGraphViz: http://www.graphviz.org/ http://www.graphviz.org/
- clearly 13y agoGliffy. It's not perfect but it is quick and easy to get something decent looking. It also has reasonable integration with Confluence if you're using that internally.
- sahil_videology 13y agoFor the rare moment when I need create a diagram in a computer, I'll use PowerPoint. However, mostly it's just the whiteboard or pen+paper. I like the chance to not look at the screen and, for the former, getting out of my chair.
- mmgutz 13y agoOpen Source PlantUML
- pradn 13y agoI sketch the initial versions on paper. To present and distribute the chart, I recreate it in MS Visio. Pretty powerful tool.
- joelhaasnoot 13y ago- A variety of online software along the way (most already mentioned here, nothing cheap or good enough for the long haul) - Dia - Microsoft Visio (when available, makes nicer diagrams than above, but sucks at anything software modeling related) - Enterprise Architect is supposedly the standard for the enterprise corp I work for.
- darkFunction 13y agoyUML ( http://yuml.me http://yuml.me ) is brilliant for quickly putting together simple, nice looking diagrams. It's based on Graphviz and doesn't require graphical tools, just a basic text language, so you can throw together something for a demo in 2 minutes. I'm working on a tool to parse Objective-C into yUML at the moment- https://github.com/darkFunction/DFGrok https://github.com/darkFunction/DFGrok
- tobinharris 13y agoInteresting! I built yUML and have an iOS apps company, we should use your plugin. And add it to the yUML community page :) Thanks -- Tobin
- corford 13y agoI use http://www.gliffy.com http://www.gliffy.com whenever I need to knock up a network diagram or similar. It's a browser based app but works very well.
- olegp 13y agoHere is a list of web apps for making diagrams: https://starthq.com/apps/?q=diagrams https://starthq.com/apps/?q=diagrams I'll add any new ones that are included in the comments here.
- dorfsmay 13y agoUML, network diagram, flowchart: http://projects.gnome.org/dia/ http://projects.gnome.org/dia/ Sequence diagram: http://sdedit.sourceforge.net/ http://sdedit.sourceforge.net/ Also for the corporate world where only Microsoft tools are an option, I tend to just use MS Word, you can make diagrams that are good enough to get the message across, yet everybody has access to it without requiring a special license.
- kryten 13y agoPencil + paper. Then zap it with my DSLR. Or if it needs to be published, use Dia and export SVG/png into target document. I occasionally write out graphviz stuff from my code using a very light weight library I wrote (C struct to stdout) if I'm trying to visualise what is in memory at a point in time. This has been invaluable whilst knocking up a simple mark-sweep GC for a project I was working on.
- crm416 13y agoLatex, with the TikZ package: http://www.texample.net/tikz/ http://www.texample.net/tikz/ Steep learning curve, but there are plenty of examples around the Internet, and it's certainly worth the investment.
- wmil 13y agoI use Umlet: http://www.umlet.com/ http://www.umlet.com/ It's good for quick diagrams when you need to explain some of the more bizarre architectural choices in your system.
- bharyms 13y agoLekh Diagram (http://www.avabodh.com/lekh http://www.avabodh.com/lekh) Quick way to draw flowchart, block diagram etc. Only available for iOS though.
- alok-g 13y agoI had tried Lekh Diagram and Grafio both and found the latter to be better. You may want to try it out. http://www.tentouchapps.com/grafio http://www.tentouchapps.com/grafio
- rajeevk 13y agoLekh has better shape recognition and shape customizibility. - you can resize vertically and horizontally independently which grafio can not - you can move vertices of any polygon. - You can draw bezier curve and modify it to any shape by changing the control points. -Lekh recognizes different kinds of connections from your drawing.
- hexagonc 13y agoSparx Enterprise Architect
- lubomir 13y agoLast time I needed to to create a diagram, I experimented with Diagrams [1], which is an interesting way of doing it if you like Haskell. [1]: http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/ http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/
- meerita 13y agoOmnigraffle. Illustrator.
- chrisgoman 13y agoOmnigraffle pro
- Satoshietal 13y agoFlowcharts are stupid. Simple systems can be internalized (kept in your mind, perfectly), and complex systems are too complex to graph to any human scale size or useful purpose. These two categories do not overlap. They apply recursively all the way down. Waste of time, no value.
- wmil 13y agoFlowcharts are waste of time. But diagrams can be very helpful. The important thing to remember is that "a complete map" will be too noisy to be useful. A diagram can describe a few parts of a complex system quickly and easily.
- sigsergv 13y agoFlowcharts are a great documentation and vizualization tool, if used properly it greatly reduce time required to understand system processes and behaviour.
- wanghq 13y agoPowerpoint
- stevejalim 13y agoUsed to use Omnigraffle, but these days I'm a Keynote kid.
- tobinharris 13y agoSketchbook Pro + Wacom for sketching ideas and pasting in Campfire/Email/Whatever. yUML for auto-generated diagrams or where I need something more pretty. Sometimes a notepad + iPhone camera to capture meeting/whiteboard diagrams.