yEd Graph Editor
Recent user activities on yEd Graph Editor
- RowenRiverstone liked yEd Graph EditorRo
- milesflarson reviewed yEd Graph EditormiIt's a great alternative to Visio and other pricey process mapping software. It does the job for me and has enough import and export options to keep me coming back to it.
- milesflarson liked yEd Graph Editormi
I came to this about 10 years ago, went away after a few uses, then came back to it having tried some other apps, and have been using it steadily for 5+ years. This is an excellent graphing tool. For quickly creating a simple diagram to explain something, or to produce an elaborate diagram for an evolving design, this is pretty good. I run it on Windows and Linux and there is no problem with moving between the OS. Stability is good as well. I'd definitely pay money for this app.
Its major strength is fast zoom and pan of large diagrams. Simple operations are easy to do. Perfect for what you would otherwise do on a whiteboard.
Maybe its focus more on Data Science or some other specific purpose.
It does a good Job when nodes are spread wide over the plane, in a organic layout and so on (just to show how big it is)
But a terrible Job if you try to visualize a sorted and structurized network. The bigger the network, the more chaotic the graph, and almost impossible to structurize it with the given tools.
Just look at the forum!
Most answers to questions how most people use this software are like:
Yed can't do this
Yed does not offer this.
Thats not how this function works
It can't...
It doesn't
The algorythm was planned for some other
...and so on
Even if the asked function would be more logical and useful
-Creating nodes specific data - just by importing from Excel NOT from inside the program
-When custom nodes imported, ALL nodes have the SAME custom properties. Even the nodes from stock. Thats mostly not useful.
-Import from Excel to EXISTING graph is NOT possible!!! Just to a new one and copying in the existing
-Export Node Data - NOT possible
and more
Making general purpose Schemes and Diagrams is a pain with this software, therefore it comes nowhere near MS Visio
If this SHOULD BE general purpose, the programmer followed and is still following the wrong concept, i think!
Funny how different my view of yEd is. For me, yEd can do what I couldn't elsewhere, mainly its autoarrange algorithms. For a beautiful price on top of that.
Reply written over 1 year ago
While there are certainly things yEd cannot do well and definitely there's also stuff that Visio does better, I would not use a forum to measure the usefulness of any software: People simply don't post questions about stuff that works! It's a forum where users are requesting help with their problems; not a review board. Of course all of the questions are about problems and just because there are a lot of questions in a forum doesn't meant that the software doesn't work for the majority of the users. Instead, it gives you an idea about how many people are using it and about the quality of support they get. Actually if you consider that this software is used by literally hundreds of thousands of users, given that there hardly is less than a dozen feature requests or questions which have more than 50 votes, I'd say that most users are actually quite happy with the software. Did you report your specific question/problem to the forum?
Instead look at the reviews at this site, e.g. The big majority of the reviewers is quite happy with it.
Reply written over 1 year ago
@sebastianmuller
At first:
Anyone whose requirements it meets should definitely use it!
You wrote:
"I would not use a forum to measure the usefulness of any software: People simply don't post questions about stuff that works! It's a forum where users are requesting help with their problems; not a review board."
Also, like most software, you have to test yourself how the features exactly work and what you can use them for. and what they can't do.
In case of Yed, people do in fact post a lot of questions on features they expect to work differently as they really do, especially if their expectation would be more logical or the more common usecase.
"Of course all of the questions are about problems and just because there are a lot of questions in a forum doesn't meant that the software doesn't work for the majority of the users. Instead, it gives you an idea about how many people are using it and about the quality of support they get."
"Did you report your specific question/problem to the forum?"
"Actually if you consider that this software is used by literally hundreds of thousands of users, given that there hardly is less than a dozen feature requests or questions which have more than 50 votes, I'd say that most users are actually quite happy with the software."
..... "Instead look at the reviews at this site, e.g. The big majority of the reviewers is quite happy with it.
This reads almost like you want to say my "average" review isn't justified because such a lot of people are happy with Yed, or you're accusing me wanting to hold someone off to use this software. Both would be ridiculous.
What I wrote in my review, especially in the first few sentences, is related to my usecase(s), which usually contain complex networks/function diagrams of up to several hundreds nodes with varying properties and reflects only my experience.
Reply written over 1 year ago
It's a great alternative to Visio and other pricey process mapping software. It does the job for me and has enough import and export options to keep me coming back to it.
Free and easy to use with provided icons
please make importing Scapple files. It is XML format
Creating, aligning and connecting nodes is very convenient. Node alingment helpers are just awesome.