plantuml.
Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#42Excalidraw and PlantUML
Each one has its own benefits / drawbacks.
PlantUML is great for version-controlled files.
Excalidraw for throwaway diagrams and discussion. Ocassionally I draw comic strips with Excalidraw.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#43I usually will do a draft in notability then use draw.io.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#44Apple Keynote.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#45I instruct sonnet-3.7-thinking in Cursor Agent mode to draw latex tikz diagrams for me and that works iteratively quite well.
Draw a circle, add a label to the circle, draw a box right to it, draw an arrow from the circle to the box, and so on.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#46I'm a Sales/Solutions/Systems Engineer/Consultant/Architect, but I also code still. I create loads of diagrams for work.
For Enterprise-Grade Slideware™, I'll use either Lucidchart or draw.io.
For my personal projects, I'll use Mermaid.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#47I'm clearly biased since I work at Datadog[1], but I use and recommend Cloudcraft[2] for diagramming. As I don't use the cloud I focus more on the manual design tools, but the automatic stuff are pretty neat.
Recently, though, I've been using D2[3] a lot and really liking it. The diagrams don't look as aesthetically pleasing to my eyes, but being able to design everything with a simple language is pretty cool, and helps with automation.
[1]: Datadog owns Cloudcraft, hence the bias. Plus, I work in the Cloudcraft team, haha.
[2]: https://www.cloudcraft.co
[3]: https://d2lang.com
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#48draw.io mostly, export as PNG and include the actual diagram XML within the PNG so it can be opened and edited.
very rarely use mermaid, but good for some simple README/markdown style diagrams.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#49Graphviz! 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?
I work at a BigCorp with a fancy md-to-html generator that supports graphviz via code blocks, e.g.
```dot
digraph { a -> b }
```
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I work at a BigCorp with a fancy md-to-html generator that supports graphviz via code blocks, e.g. ```dot digraph { a -> b } ``` But day-to-day, I actually use graphviz inside emacs org-mode (and in a private git repo). If you press C-c C-c with your cursor on the code blocks, it plops the rendered graph below.
TIL org-mode can do that (though I really shouldn't be surprised). Thanks for the info!