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Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

icepanel.io

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Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#11

Post by ta988 »

toss1 wrote: post #9
victor96 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Gordon, It'd be great to hear your thoughts/feedback on the tool. Please feel free to reach out to us. In terms your comment about lock-in I understand your fear and I think a lot of companies will share this. We currently offer PDF/PNG export however due to the interactive nature of our diagrams we're looking into how we can provide an interactive export. An IcePanel file is also an idea we're looking into. We'd…

A native app would also allow you to access different market segments. E.g., I work with a fair amount of DOD-controlled information, and storing it in a cloud is not an option. I'd be all over an app like this that allowed us to use local storage.

Have a look at diagrams.net, you can run it locally, and there are quite a few interactive elements (panels you can close and this kind of stuff).

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#12

Post by Veuxdo »

css wrote: post #10

A question I always have for diagramming software is how it handles refactoring. This is often the most frustrating part of every tool. How does IcePanel improve this experience? Group selection and dragging to hopefully have enough room for something new is not workable in complex diagrams.

For diagrams that are long-lived and refactorable, diagrams-as-code is really your only option. Changing complex diagrams with drag-and-drop interfaces is a nightmare.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#13

Post by ta988 »

Veuxdo wrote: post #12
css wrote: post #10

A question I always have for diagramming software is how it handles refactoring. This is often the most frustrating part of every tool. How does IcePanel improve this experience? Group selection and dragging to hopefully have enough room for something new is not workable in complex diagrams.

For diagrams that are long-lived and refactorable, diagrams-as-code is really your only option. Changing complex diagrams with drag-and-drop interfaces is a nightmare.

I wish there would be a mixture of diagrams.net and mermaid.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#14

Post by humps »

GordonS wrote: post #7

I usually use Visio for diagrams like this. It's a very powerful tool, but it's expensive, and really fiddly to use such that everything is aligned and sized the way I want - I invariably spend far too long adjusting size and position. Something like this could be really useful, and I'm keen to give it a try! If the founder is here, a question: what formats can you export diagrams in? My biggest fears in using someth…

I was considering Visio until I saw the price, the only alternative I found was MyDraw[1], which looks competent and is much cheaper ($69). I haven't used it yet though. In the past I've relied on Dia[2].

[1] https://www.mydraw.com/ [2] http://dia-installer.de/

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#17

Post by GordonS »

victor96 wrote: post #8
GordonS wrote: post #7

I usually use Visio for diagrams like this. It's a very powerful tool, but it's expensive, and really fiddly to use such that everything is aligned and sized the way I want - I invariably spend far too long adjusting size and position. Something like this could be really useful, and I'm keen to give it a try! If the founder is here, a question: what formats can you export diagrams in? My biggest fears in using someth…

Hey Gordon, It'd be great to hear your thoughts/feedback on the tool. Please feel free to reach out to us. In terms your comment about lock-in I understand your fear and I think a lot of companies will share this. We currently offer PDF/PNG export however due to the interactive nature of our diagrams we're looking into how we can provide an interactive export. An IcePanel file is also an idea we're looking into. We'd…

I'd love to be able to export to a vector format - something I can load into another diagram tool. Not sure of the Visio format is open and documented, but being able to export to Visio would set my mind completely at ease.

Aside from that, I'd echo what a couple of others here have said about having a desktop app version, which would work with local, rather than cloud storage - I generally prefer to have full control over my data and how it is managed. I personally wouldn't mind an Electron app (presumably a native app is going to be a lot of work).

I look forward to trying it!

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#18

Post by deanclatworthy »

Having fallen back in love with PlantUML recently I’ll never use a proprietary tool that doesn’t have declarative syntax. System diagrams and documentation are a crucial part of any software business and one that is regularly out of date as people end up using tools like draw.io which nobody knows how to get access to or use.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#19

Post by JacobDesigns »

css wrote: post #10

A question I always have for diagramming software is how it handles refactoring. This is often the most frustrating part of every tool. How does IcePanel improve this experience? Group selection and dragging to hopefully have enough room for something new is not workable in complex diagrams.

We want to help users spread complexity across several diagrams with the aim of reducing enormous diagrams that cause confusion. IcePanel allows you to quickly create tabs for each diagram you want to communicate and a model view to keep all the properties in sync.

We're also looking at how we can bring our diagrams into source control to allow it to be maintained easier.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#20

Post by JacobDesigns »

f6v wrote: post #16

Tools are great, but here's the million-dollar question: how do you make people maintain the docs?

We have a few ideas in that area revolving around our Slackbot, keep watching for our next releases for more details.
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