Application to help build diagrams

Question

Do you know a good software application which can help me to build diagrams? I'd like the application to have a lot of icons to choose from in order to put my ideas into images.

Answer 1

Check out DIA!

Dia is inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

DIA is free and open source software.

Answer 2

You can try using Creately. It's really easy to use, it's free and there's no need to install anything. You can also collaborate with others online on your diagrams.

Answer 3

You can use the Open Office program called "Draw".

Here is a link to a how: Flow Charts with Draw

I use Visio now, but I have used Draw and png files I find on the web (at sites like iconspedia) to create a cleaner look.

Answer 4

If you do not necessarily need a graphical user interface, Graphviz is also recommendable. It offers more sophisticated features than e.g. Viso or Dia do. But for simple diagrams Dia might be sufficient though.

Answer 5

I use LibreOffice Draw (almost the same as OpenOffice) and I am satisfied. I also looked on yEd Graph Editor which is in Java, free and looks promising.

Answer 6

Mindjet Mindmanager is a nice application that I've used in the past. Since you don't specify what type of diagrams you're looking for it's hard to give you really specific advice.

Answer 7

RFFlow is lightweight and versatile. Saves in its own format for editability, but can save as WMF, EMF, GIF etc, and the file sizes are kept small.