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List of nifty tools for drawing diagrams, charts and chart-flows

alvit.de — "Developing web-sites over the last few years, I ’ve been stumbling over the same problem over and over again: how can I visualize my ideas easily and quickly? I’ve spent hours googling for useful tools and tutorials which would help me to create diagrams, charts, flow-charts to visualize my personal ideas to my clients. Here are the results."

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  • icellist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nifty indeed, dugg.
    • racemic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I would also suggest adding Prefuse ( http://www.prefuse.org ) to the list. It's a pretty robust set of tools for creating visualizations of data, although maybe not as simple to use as these other solutions.
    • mrFREEZE, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Forgive me for the cliche, but it's very "web 2.0"-looking, which seems to be the look everyone's going for these days. Not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, it is what it is; if that's your thing, cool, if you're tired of it, that's fine too.

      Personally, I think there's still some life left in the whole "super slick and glossy" look but there are a lot of people who are using it as a crutch. Does anyone else think so?

      BTW, 316 diggs, 16 comments;
      This looks like another one of those stories that people digg out of reflex.
    • vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3These are nice programs, but my company still tends to just write up on a piece of grid paper or the public white board. Just another alternative =)
    • GamingLab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you know your company became big when they start to ask for fancy powerpoint presentations with all kinds of "visualisations" which you either have to simplify by a factor of 1,000 or plain out fake to deliver them on-time.
  • hongy_r, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1that's teriffic. i have used omnigraffle before, and i can it is great. not sure if it is worth US$80 though.
    • Kelmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3When I got my first Mac (a Ti PowerBook) I was absolutely thrilled to discover that it came with OmniGraffle 2 since that immediately gave me a replacement for MS Visio. I'm now running with OmniGraffle Pro 4 and it remains as my favourite diagram tool and the price was totally worth it for me. My only issue with the application is the name. I ignored the application for a couple of weeks for the sole reason that its name didn't sound like anything I was interested in and gave no real indication of what its purpose was. Other OmniGroup products, however, have relatively descriptive names (e.g. OmniOutliner and OmniPlan) but "Graffle" isn't even a word in English.
    • strcmp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@Kelmon

      It's supposed to be a nonsense word to mock "Visio."
  • mojaam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Love the variety, Illustrator's my fav.
  • nronhubbard, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0omnigraffle rules if it possible to rule interaction design...
    dugg for nice friendly post!
  • peterbubble, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I never immediately start drawing my website ideas, but always first write them down. This way i avoid losing valuable time en freshness. I love to write these ideas in "Omnioutliner Pro" (omnigroup.com). It makes you think in a very structured way.

    Then i start to visualise my favorite(s) idea(s) in Fireworks.
    See at bubble.be for all of the results.
  • LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Only one I've ever used was Visio. It is alright.
  • wowbagger, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2What the ***** is a chart-flow. When I was EE it was "flow chart".
    • smithco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6A chart-flow is a mathematical description of how easily your chart flows around various objects. It's very similar to other concepts like air-flow and water-flow. It's not uncommon to see graphic designers put objects into 'chart tunnels' to see the chart-flow around test objects in your modern graphic design laboratory.
    • Modulo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2(adds smithco to friends list)
  • infonote, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought the answer was to use UML
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2open office has a good charting program.

    Also, inkscape works pretty well, and it uses SVG so you can zoom in /out and it doesn't look pixelated.

    As for libraries, I'm sure there are more charting libraries out there, but I hear good things about jfreechart.
    • mrFREEZE, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I just finished a game doc as a final project and used Open Office's chart feature. It's OK, but I wish I was a programmer so I can suggest my own features and submit them.

      For example, I couldn't figure out how (or even if) you could rotate the text on the x-axis of a graph label. Very annoying.
    • noksagt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2OO.o's charting is being improved. You can see how, suggest other ways, and try out developer snapshots at:
      http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html
  • Nystagmus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've used DIA before and liked it. Very easy to use and a nice free alternative to MS Visio. I recommend googling for the Cisco icon set for DIA someone created if you want to do network diagramming.
  • Wintersfury, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Even more interesting than the list iteself, I liked the bar of links to every user-driven news site at the top.
  • Zedix79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That list is all fine, but it'd be helpful if the author would post one or two paragraphs describing which technique he found was the best. I'm in a similar situation and I was expecting at least which he found more useful for his purpose.
  • dr3d, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0CSS to do charting .. *head shake* .. years from now they'll look back and laff at the silliness
  • Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice list. However, I think they forgot FreeMind and PocketMind - the OS versions of MindManager. I use it a lot...check it out - http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
  • silversalute, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Another to add to the list is StarUML
    It's open source.
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/staruml
  • Resilient, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Perfect. Just what I needed!
  • thamizh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hi All,

    I Need to create a process diagram in my jsp application. which has been developed with the help of struts. Is there any tool or way to create diagram and show this in my web application (not like applets). I need to edit each node in that diagram and set value for that. This is very urgent.

    Thanks in advance
    Thamizh
  • KareAnderson, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Elegant & helpful post and blog for this non-geek, design-over & former journalist
  •  

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