draw.io

i tried a bunch of other softwares out there to see which diagramming tool I like the most. I don't like visio its bloated and slow

I like this program because its simple to use and understand, flexible and useful. But it took me awhile to figure out how I wanted to set it up for long term scalability

There's a number of options here to setup for backup, as of writing this post

• google drive
• github
• dropbox
• onedrive
• device

If you use google drive, the file just gets saved in the root folder making it a really big pain to manage If you save it in github, you have to select a repo everytime + commit which is way too time consuming. Plus it doesn't autosave One drive is crap, I suggest you not touch it at all Device is okay but is limited with backup functionality, You could dump it into your cloud storage from here but I suggest just integrating it all together

I suggest using dropbox. It will save into dropbox/apps/draw.io. The reason why is because it autosaves every change you make.

Also, if you save using this automatic method, it saves as a .html file instead of .xml so you can just click the file and see what revision changes were made

There's 2 ways to use draw.io. There's the webapp and there's a desktop app

• desktop app you can pin a shortcut to it
• webapp self explanatory

in either case you probably want it attached to dropbox or one of those other solutions if you intend to use your diagrams across multiple pc's

dropbox is best here

whenever you want to opening the file, i suggest doing it straight from your dropbox/apps/draw.io folder, the open dialog box is horrendous in draw.io right now. this way you can open the file with multiple pc's etc.

in fact you could just double click the file inside dropbox its better off

Whenever you make a diagram just keep your revision notes off to the side because you can make the daigram as big as you need it to be

also your better off using the desktop version if you use dropbox since this program is saving every few seconds dropbox will spam you with notifications

[Edited by Kagerjay, June 02]

[Edited by Kagerjay, June 02]

[Edited by Kagerjay, June 02]

It's useful for Creativity but the Export functions are very limited: PDF and PNG work well but SVG is not standard compliant and HTML-Export produces an HTML page with the PNG as full page.

I've always been on the lookout for MS Visio alternatives and the free web application is just way too limited. After trying a number of alternatives, I finally settled with diagrams.net (formerly known as draw.io).

It's amazingly powerful and feature rich, and free! The main bonus for me is the ability to connect to cloud services for collaboration. At work we use Office 365, so I use OneDrive/Sharepoint for sharing.

If you don't connect it with a cloud service be aware that you will have to download to your machine to keep the diagrams. And there's no auto-save. Personally, I connected it Google Drive.

Draw.io is highly intuitive and efficient to use, very offers a large variety of diagrams out of box, creates beautiful diagrams, is an open source freeware, and gets updated frequently with new features.

It's capable of reading tailored .csv files. So manual work is minimized.

Very powerful for all basic needs, huge functionality, the interface speeds up the work quite a bit. But sometimes it lets you down with vector graphics, for a professional level it may not be the best option

Draw.io desktop application is great too. If you are unaware, check it out here on GitHub https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop