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Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

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Re: Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

#3

Post by Terretta »

> Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them

In general, don’t whiteboard sketches have a hand-drawn feel?

Seems like the trick would be a tool to give diagramming tools a hand-drawn whiteboard sketch feel, or take hand-drawn whiteboard sketches and give them a diagramming feel.

Could be neat to put this engine behind e.g. graphviz/dot, for instance, a la “sketch viz”:

https://sketchviz.com/new

Or for the real parlor trick, emit a literally hand drawn whiteboard sketch in dot!

PS. Many contributions to graphviz needed:

https://graphviz.gitlab.io/doc/todo.html

Re: Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

#7

Post by ghaff »

Terretta wrote: post #3

> Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them In general, don’t whiteboard sketches have a hand-drawn feel? Seems like the trick would be a tool to give diagramming tools a hand-drawn whiteboard sketch feel, or take hand-drawn whiteboard sketches and give them a diagramming feel. Could be neat to put this engine behind e.g. graphviz/dot, for instance, a la…

Nirvana for me is a tool that takes my really sloppy sketches and writing and converts it to something that looks like an actual sketch artist drew it. Maybe pick different styles. No idea how one would go about doing that though.

(TBH, it would probably be a case of it being better to just hire an artist.)

Re: Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

#8

Post by jonpurdy »

For quick sketches during sprint planning meetings or design sessions, I started using Witeboard.com a couple of years ago but have been experimenting with Excalidraw for the past two months.

TL;DR: I still tend to use Witeboard.com for quick sketches, but if I plan on doing something more complicated and not time-sensitive I use Excalidraw.

What I like about Witeboard.com:

- fast to load and easy to get started

- quick keys (t: typing, p: pencil)

- pencil modifier keys: hold down l to switch from free drawing to drawing a line, or r to draw a rectangle

Dislike about Witeboard.com:

- It's like MS Paint, once the pixels are drawn you can't move them around (despite being vectors (I assume, infinitely zoomable))

What I like about Excalidraw:

- Can move shapes around (fixes biggest gripe with Witeboard.com)

- Sloppiness levels: Artist is what I use and is PERFECT for my needs, but nice to have options for other users

- Also has quick keys (8: typing, 7: pencil)

- Exports editable drawing as a file, not saved in cloud. So you can just import that file again and not rely on saving the URL.

Dislike about Excalidraw:

- Preventing me from switching to it: once a tool (ie. pencil) is used for a stroke, it reverts back to mouse cursor (I'd rather have it stay as pencil and hit 1 for it to switch to a cursor)

- Majorly annoying: the open/save/color/stroke palette in top left is too similar to a square ratio, so it blocks a corner of the image

If those two dislikes were fixed, I'd likely switch to it fulltime. For both products, I'd easily pay a few bucks a month for them.

Re: Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

#9

Post by filipn »

jonpurdy wrote: post #8

For quick sketches during sprint planning meetings or design sessions, I started using Witeboard.com a couple of years ago but have been experimenting with Excalidraw for the past two months. TL;DR: I still tend to use Witeboard.com for quick sketches, but if I plan on doing something more complicated and not time-sensitive I use Excalidraw. What I like about Witeboard.com: - fast to load and easy to get started - qu…

  - Preventing me from switching to it: once a tool (ie. pencil) is used for a stroke, it reverts back to mouse cursor (I'd rather have it stay as pencil and hit 1 for it to switch to a cursor)
There is a little lock icon next to the drawing tools which enables you to lock a tool, so it won't revert back.
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