Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#11

Post by oliverx0 » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #5

99% sure this is not what you're asking for, but I think it's worth mentioning monodraw: https://monodraw.helftone.com It's really useful for embedding diagrams in your code. Not so much for uses outside of code though.

This looks so much fun, thanks for sharing.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#12

Post by a9ex » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

FigJam by Figma

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#13

Post by ecocentrik » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #4

Lucidchart has worked well for me in the past, with built in AWS icon packs.

Seconded, very comprehensive paid tool that's been around for a while and works very well.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#14

Post by flaminHotSpeedo » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

Occasionally it can be hard to wrestle with but my go-to is PlantUML, which has a simple syntax and for better or for worse doesn't support many formatting options, so I can't get distracted tweaking the specifics of the layout

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#15

Post by plasma_beam » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #9

Powerpoint

Powerpoint is also my go to. It just feels more natural and I prefer editing locally, not in web browser.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#16

Post by Jack5500 » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

tldraw.com

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#17

Post by johntitorjr » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

brunooliv wrote: post #7

draw.io

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#18

Post by ttd » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #6

Graphviz! The syntax is kind of absurd, but it produces some beautiful results and can be version controlled.

Definitely a personal fan of Graphviz as well! One thing I'm curious about are usecases that require version-controlled diagram sources. Do you guys have e.g. a build step that updates the rendered version somewhere? Or Confluence integration, etc?

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#19

Post by ajkjk » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

Semi, aside, but I'm desperate for a better way to make math diagrams (WYSIWYG style, not TeX). I asked about this a while ago and nothing is really doing it for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38351370. Although since then I have heard about https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/ as well. Right now I use Excalidraw because there's a fork (never landed... ugh) which supports TeX in labels. But its actual drawing tools are quite limited, not to mention janky. There are some other options not mentioned in that thread which I've found in since then, but I still haven't seen anything satisfactory.

If you made math stuff easy to draw I'd use your tool in a heartbeat. Unfortunately there's probably not a large market for that sort of thing.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

#20

Post by ttd » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #5

99% sure this is not what you're asking for, but I think it's worth mentioning monodraw: https://monodraw.helftone.com It's really useful for embedding diagrams in your code. Not so much for uses outside of code though.

Hey, I got some good use out of Emacs artist-mode for a while - so I love seeing ideas like this! Thanks for linking that, hadn't seen it before.