←back to thread

Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

61 points ttd | 2 comments | 12 Mar 25 14:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.475s | source

I've been working on a diagramming tool [1] and wanted to get some thoughts from people who regularly make architecture and other technical diagrams. I know my own experiences but I'm quite curious to hear others.

I'm guessing for a lot of people draw.io and Excalidraw are probably the go-to. If you use draw.io (or something else), what do you like about it, or what do you wish was better?

[1] - https://app.vexlio.com/ for the curious

1. viraptor ◴[12 Mar 25 16:45 UTC] No.43345098[source]▶
Excalidraw for life. It can be embedded in Obsidian as well.

Draw.io is OK too, but the interaction is much slower when editing. The strict position/shape of arrows makes me want to clean things up way more than necessary and waste time.

I'd maybe consider miro or draw.io if I was working on something with other people and expected lots of edits and change history.

Mermaid is an interesting concept, but putting things in the reasonable location can be next to impossible and a single new connection can blow up the whole layout. And the integration is never quite polished - so many times I've been scrolling down a github page just to suddenly stop and resize a diagram. Then the panning/zoom is a bit clunky. (I know it's a client issue, but unless the defaults become reasonable, it's a mermaid issue too)

replies(1): >>43370104 #
2. ◴[15 Mar 25 04:58 UTC] No.43370104[source]▶