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Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

61 points ttd | 4 comments | 12 Mar 25 14:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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. jamesponddotco ◴[12 Mar 25 20:21 UTC] No.43347290[source]▶
I'm clearly biased since I work at Datadog[1], but I use and recommend Cloudcraft[2] for diagramming. As I don't use the cloud I focus more on the manual design tools, but the automatic stuff are pretty neat.

Recently, though, I've been using D2[3] a lot and really liking it. The diagrams don't look as aesthetically pleasing to my eyes, but being able to design everything with a simple language is pretty cool, and helps with automation.

[1]: Datadog owns Cloudcraft, hence the bias. Plus, I work in the Cloudcraft team, haha.

[2]: https://www.cloudcraft.co

[3]: https://d2lang.com

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2. ttd ◴[13 Mar 25 00:49 UTC] No.43349319[source]▶
Does Cloudcraft do generic diagramming? At least from the landing page it seems pretty purpose-built for cloud architecture diagramming only. I also have to give major kudos for whoever made the call to go with an isometric projection... visually and mentally, it's a perfect choice for that domain!
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3. jamesponddotco ◴[13 Mar 25 01:26 UTC] No.43349498[source]▶
The focus is cloud architecture diagramming, but you can use the design tools to diagram bare-metal architectures if you want or anything else, really. Heck, we had an internal game of chess going at some point and someone was rebuilding pieces of New York City using the design tools.
4. Terretta ◴[13 Mar 25 19:11 UTC] No.43356348[source]▶
Due to pricing model, due to cost CloudCraft is effectively unusable for small shops using accounts as an information boundary (per best practices for certain sectors).

Doesn't mean small firms wouldn't want to. Just, it's not sold that way. Super disappointing!