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Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

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Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#201

Post by rohn007 »

freehunter wrote: post #123
sgaur wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning Visio. I work for the Visio team, so if you have any feedback pls lmk.

Mac. Pleeeeeeease support Mac! I'm a technical consultant who was given a Macbook for work and I have to run a VM to use Visio. We're working on spec'ing out a replacement technology that works on Mac, but none of the competitors are as good as Visio, and all of our clients expect Visio. In 2019 we've got a team of 65 people all ditching Visio (and our Windows VMs) and going with LucidChart or Omnigraffle because we…

Free hunter: . The problem you encountered was an "improvement" MS introduced in with Office 2016. They decided that Visio was a "business" product that home users could not possibly want to use ... ! More likely, that home users could not AFFORD to use at the price point MS is selling Visio. . Initially, they made it impossible to install Visio (and Project) with ANY other Office bundle. OOPS! It took them almost a year to fix for business users. . Here are a couple of links from MS about installing Visio . https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Install-Visio-f98f2... . SUPPORTED SCENARIOS FOR INSTALLING DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF OFFICE, VISIO, AND PROJECT ON THE SAME COMPUTER – DIFFERENT YEARS AND MSI VS CTR. . https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt712177%28v=office.16... . This is an EXCELLENT resource. Starting on October 11, 2016, Office 2013 software that uses Click-to-Run can be installed on the same computer with Office 2016 software that uses Click-to-Run. . We can also Use the Office Deployment Tool to install volume licensed editions of Visio 2016 and Project 2016 . . Note: The MAK keys currently available on the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) aren’t compatible with this specific installation scenario. We’re working on a solution, but we currently don’t have a date when we expect the solution to be available. KMS activation is available.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#202

Post by rohn007 »

eatonphil wrote: post #84
sgaur wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning Visio. I work for the Visio team, so if you have any feedback pls lmk.

Bring Visio online to feature parity with Visio desktop! Demonstrated progress/goals toward this would go a long way too.

Sorry, that is not going to happen. (my opinion as an informed user ...) . The Office online (onlie ) (cr)applets will NEVER have feature parity with desktop equivalents. The online applets are intended for simple use only. They can read and do simple edits on files created in the "real" desktop applications without corrupting features they cannot edit. . They are essentially a "bait and switch" tactic. Get you used to using the simple applet, to "encourage" you to spend money to rent Office 365 (their preferred product). Like "Office 2010 Starter" that came "free" with some computers, for a short time. .

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#203

Post by eatonphil »

rohn007 wrote: post #202
eatonphil wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bring Visio online to feature parity with Visio desktop! Demonstrated progress/goals toward this would go a long way too.

Sorry, that is not going to happen. (my opinion as an informed user ...) . The Office online (onlie ) (cr)applets will NEVER have feature parity with desktop equivalents. The online applets are intended for simple use only. They can read and do simple edits on files created in the "real" desktop applications without corrupting features they cannot edit. . They are essentially a "bait and switch" tactic. Get you used…

Confused about your premise. I'm paying for service now. I pay the same price for the desktop version as for the online version.

I'm not trying to save money, I'm trying to ensure a good experience for folks who need to use Visio on Mac/Linux/FreeBSD in addition to the Windows users.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#204

Post by timka »

ljegou wrote: post #21

OmniGraffle works well for me. (MacOS)

Around 2009 I saw someone's work made with OmniGraffle and it was so beautiful that wanted to have that too.

BTW, until recently OmniGraffle was the only commercial mac app I used in past 10 years. Now I got FL Studio as well.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#205

Post by webmaven »

Spooky23 wrote: post #175
neltnerb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went out and bought a license and used it frequently for figures in grant proposals and other documents, Visio is excruciating. It's not even much of a learning curve, it's just frustrating and feels like you're fighting it. This is because I was using Visio where the final product needs to look aesthetically perfect, and the workflow would get you to 95%. But we all know how much manual tweaking it ta…

It’s an unusual, red-headed stepchild product. Personally, it’s unusual in that it’s an acquired product that’s sort of an Office component and it has gotten worse with every release until very recently. Even Outlook, while awful, gets better.

BTW, Visio isn't the only Office component that was acquired, FrontPage was as well (both the client and the server-side extensions), and even venerable PowerPoint, which was Microsoft's very first acquisition back in 1987.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#206

Post by jamescampbell »

eatonphil wrote: post #187
lma21 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Draw.io different than Visio when it comes to creating our own objects, sizing, grouping, connecting, arranging them?

It was difficult for me to articulate in the original comment and still difficult for me to articulate now. :) Give it a try yourself, Visio has free trials. If you don't see a difference then it doesn't matter! But it had to do with all of those items being very manual in Draw.io with little assistance. Whereas Visio auto-resized and offered connections and new elements very fluidly. It seemed like it was taking me…

I disagree. I found draw.io really simple and fast compared to visio.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#207

Post by jamescampbell »

mrmondo wrote: post #166

Not like the example you've given, but for well designed and easy to configure diagrams that can be saved or exported in plain text (e.g. for use in documentation, websites or markdown) I use Monodraw: https://monodraw.helftone.com For graphical diagrams I use yEd or occasionally draw.io for quick and simple graphical flow charts (online or offline as a gross javascript web frame - but it works well enough and it's f…

Monodraw is great. Well worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#208

Post by monocularvision »

zacman85 wrote: post #112

Keynote is actually a surprisingly good tool for building diagrams once you learn the interface and features. I use it for all of our architecture diagrams and for generating printable posters of such to hang in our office. I have tried nearly everything else, but unless you need semantics native to your diagram, Keynote is (oddly, I know) the best I have found.

It also has great animation support which would support some of the “flash” seen in the OP’s example.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#209

Post by GordonS »

joostlek wrote: post #105
sgaur wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning Visio. I work for the Visio team, so if you have any feedback pls lmk.

Make it more stable. Everybody in my class started with Visio, they almost all went to alternatives due to unreliability. Crashes with no autosave files happened way too often.

I'm a long-time Visio user (maybe 10+ years), and I also find it crashes way more often than any other Office product.

Re: Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?

#210

Post by GordonS »

kamranahmed_se wrote: post #104

https://balsamiq.com/ I use balsamiq all the time - helps me make diagrams with a sketchy feeling. It is designed to be used for the mockups only but I find myself using it for everything. You might have seen it used in (pretty famous?!) developer roadmap https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap or in some of my blog posts https://medium.com/tech-tajawal/rabbitmq-at-tajawal-c4eeccdd...

I've been using Balsamiq since it first came out years ago - it was one of the 1st popular wireframing tools.

It kind of feels like it's stood still though - they've had years to innovate, but haven't really. At the very least, I wish they'd add more shapes/components, because the library you get is severely lacking.

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