Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5928696

by ziko • 13 years ago

46 60 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

DanBC• 13 years ago

gnuplot (http://www.gnuplot.info/)

dia (https://live.gnome.org/Dia)

tdec• 13 years ago

- Mindjet Mindmanager for mind mapping - Visio for quick and dirty flowcharts - ARIS for full blown process management exercises

bdfh42• 13 years ago

A pencil and paper are the superior solution.

When you get to show the results to others - just use whatever you are presenting the rest of the message with - almost all "office" type products have sufficient capacity to manage that part. The clever bit is the bit you do by yourself.

alok-g4• 13 years ago

Nothing beats pencil and paper. We used to just scan hand-drawn diagrams and insert them into PowerPoint or wherever. Over the time this got accepted as the culture within the group.

ziko2• 13 years ago

Does anyone have enough expertise to tell me in which program this was made?

http://cl.ly/image/1o070d3s2Y0b

AdamGibbins2• 13 years ago

OmniGraffle

peteretep• 13 years ago

Is a fantastic product, as are the rest of the Omni stable

neilbowers• 13 years ago

Yep, OmniGraffle for me. I've been using it for the last 8 years.

PavlovsCat• 13 years ago

http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html

alok-g4• 13 years ago

Seconding Yed. It is great for making structured diagrams. It is very quick to make good looking diagrams without spending much time on formatting and beautification. User interface is nice and configurable, though a bit counter-intuitive at times. I have been unable to figure how to make free-form diagrams using Yed, so feel sometimes that creativity is hampered.

onk• 13 years ago

Auto-layout is what makes tools like yEd special. I showed someone recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5vqVgd4KW8&t=2m10s

AdamGibbins2• 13 years ago

For ASCII diagrams: http://www.asciiflow.com/ or http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/

dorfsmay3• 13 years ago

Neat! Thanks.

ndcrandall2• 13 years ago

I first use paper and pencil, but then I transcribe and keep it up to date electronically.

http://lucidchart.com has been my favorite service as it is free for simpler projects and can be upgraded if you need more complexity. I've watched the project grow from an idea, to recruiting developers in my CS classes, to a full blown project which has exceeded my expectations. It's exciting to watch!

karolisd• 13 years ago

Seconding Lucid Chart. It's great.

abrichr• 13 years ago

What's your process/toolchain for transcription and storage?

ndcrandall2• 13 years ago

My process is a bit rudimentary. I just have a folder with notebook paper in it. When I need to create a new system or subsytem I will draw it on paper just as it would look in any of these diagraming tools. Once ready I'll use lucidchart to replicate the drawing (schema or flowchart). Once it's implemented in code and committed in Git I will go back to the electronic copy, mark in red or other colors anything that will change in the next refactor or implementation. As I refactor I change the red makrings to black indicating it is now part of the system. The paper becomes an artifact of the first revision.

Sometimes I'll break out a new paper and do the initial drawings to test my knowledge of the system and see if I have complicated the design. This system works well for me.

dmgrow• 13 years ago

Appreciate the callout for Lucidchart. If anyone has any questions or suggestions, happy to help [I work there].

Aside from the standard free account, there are also free Pro accounts for students who use an educational email address: https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/education/students

oliveratkinson• 13 years ago

definitely http://www.websequencediagrams.com/, it produces clear results for management and clients

seivan• 13 years ago

This is how I think it up in my head, just with words, and end up writing it like that as well.

Thanks!

cdvonstinkpot• 13 years ago

Presently I use LibreOffice Draw, but I've wondered what HN readers use. I'm glad you submitted this thread.

ziko2• 13 years ago

Thanks! I think of this topic as rarely discussed but its 'products' are often used.

fatman• 13 years ago

I started using Dia (http://projects.gnome.org/dia/) when my employer wouldn't spring for Visio. A bit quirky at times, but overall not too bad for simple stuff.

wolfe• 13 years ago

http://www.draw.io/

pauldelany• 13 years ago

http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/index.html

motley• 13 years ago

yEd Graph Editor from yWorks (http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html)

alok-g4• 13 years ago

This is one of the best I have found:

http://www.tentouchapps.com/grafio

It makes good looking diagrams very quickly without hampering creativity. It requires almost no effort on formatting and beautification.

I wish they had an app for the desktop. People have requested the same on their forums a few times.

gnosis• 13 years ago

Inkscape, when I want them to look really nice and am willing to put some time in to making them look the way I want.

I've also used kivio on occasion, and graphviz, and ploticus. Again, all depending on what I'm after.

betterunix• 13 years ago

Dia

russomi• 13 years ago

Lucid

X9E-127• 13 years ago

I use paper. derp.

torstesu• 13 years ago

GraphViz: http://www.graphviz.org/

clearly• 13 years ago

Gliffy. It's not perfect but it is quick and easy to get something decent looking. It also has reasonable integration with Confluence if you're using that internally.

sahil_videology• 13 years ago

For the rare moment when I need create a diagram in a computer, I'll use PowerPoint. However, mostly it's just the whiteboard or pen+paper. I like the chance to not look at the screen and, for the former, getting out of my chair.

mmgutz• 13 years ago

Open Source PlantUML

pradn• 13 years ago

I sketch the initial versions on paper. To present and distribute the chart, I recreate it in MS Visio. Pretty powerful tool.

joelhaasnoot• 13 years ago

- A variety of online software along the way (most already mentioned here, nothing cheap or good enough for the long haul)

- Dia

- Microsoft Visio (when available, makes nicer diagrams than above, but sucks at anything software modeling related)

- Enterprise Architect is supposedly the standard for the enterprise corp I work for.

darkFunction• 13 years ago

yUML ( http://yuml.me ) is brilliant for quickly putting together simple, nice looking diagrams. It's based on Graphviz and doesn't require graphical tools, just a basic text language, so you can throw together something for a demo in 2 minutes.

I'm working on a tool to parse Objective-C into yUML at the moment- https://github.com/darkFunction/DFGrok

tobinharris2• 13 years ago

Interesting! I built yUML and have an iOS apps company, we should use your plugin. And add it to the yUML community page :) Thanks -- Tobin

corford• 13 years ago

I use http://www.gliffy.com whenever I need to knock up a network diagram or similar. It's a browser based app but works very well.

olegp• 13 years ago

Here is a list of web apps for making diagrams: https://starthq.com/apps/?q=diagrams

I'll add any new ones that are included in the comments here.

dorfsmay3• 13 years ago

UML, network diagram, flowchart: http://projects.gnome.org/dia/

Sequence diagram: http://sdedit.sourceforge.net/

Also for the corporate world where only Microsoft tools are an option, I tend to just use MS Word, you can make diagrams that are good enough to get the message across, yet everybody has access to it without requiring a special license.

ch• 13 years ago

sdedit looks like a really useful tool. Thanks for posting this!

dorfsmay3• 13 years ago

No Problem. I was really impress by the ease of use and output quality.

kryten• 13 years ago

Pencil + paper.

Then zap it with my DSLR. Or if it needs to be published, use Dia and export SVG/png into target document.

I occasionally write out graphviz stuff from my code using a very light weight library I wrote (C struct to stdout) if I'm trying to visualise what is in memory at a point in time. This has been invaluable whilst knocking up a simple mark-sweep GC for a project I was working on.

crm416• 13 years ago

Latex, with the TikZ package: http://www.texample.net/tikz/

Steep learning curve, but there are plenty of examples around the Internet, and it's certainly worth the investment.

wmil2• 13 years ago

I use Umlet: http://www.umlet.com/

It's good for quick diagrams when you need to explain some of the more bizarre architectural choices in your system.

bharyms• 13 years ago

Lekh Diagram (http://www.avabodh.com/lekh) Quick way to draw flowchart, block diagram etc. Only available for iOS though.

alok-g4• 13 years ago

I had tried Lekh Diagram and Grafio both and found the latter to be better. You may want to try it out.

http://www.tentouchapps.com/grafio

rajeevk• 13 years ago

Lekh has better shape recognition and shape customizibility.

- you can resize vertically and horizontally independently which grafio can not

- you can move vertices of any polygon.

- You can draw bezier curve and modify it to any shape by changing the control points.

-Lekh recognizes different kinds of connections from your drawing.

hexagonc• 13 years ago

Sparx Enterprise Architect

lubomir• 13 years ago

Last time I needed to to create a diagram, I experimented with Diagrams [1], which is an interesting way of doing it if you like Haskell.

[1] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/

meerita• 13 years ago

Omnigraffle. Illustrator.

chrisgoman• 13 years ago

Omnigraffle pro

Satoshietal• 13 years ago

Flowcharts are stupid. Simple systems can be internalized (kept in your mind, perfectly), and complex systems are too complex to graph to any human scale size or useful purpose. These two categories do not overlap. They apply recursively all the way down. Waste of time, no value.

wmil2• 13 years ago

Flowcharts are waste of time.

But diagrams can be very helpful. The important thing to remember is that "a complete map" will be too noisy to be useful.

A diagram can describe a few parts of a complex system quickly and easily.

sigsergv• 13 years ago

Flowcharts are a great documentation and vizualization tool, if used properly it greatly reduce time required to understand system processes and behaviour.

wanghq• 13 years ago

Powerpoint

stevejalim• 13 years ago

Used to use Omnigraffle, but these days I'm a Keynote kid.

tobinharris2• 13 years ago

Sketchbook Pro + Wacom for sketching ideas and pasting in Campfire/Email/Whatever.

yUML for auto-generated diagrams or where I need something more pretty.

Sometimes a notepad + iPhone camera to capture meeting/whiteboard diagrams.

Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

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