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Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

61 points ttd | 2 comments | 12 Mar 25 14:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.014s | 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

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bqmjjx0kac ◴[12 Mar 25 14:24 UTC] No.43343584[source]▶
Graphviz! The syntax is kind of absurd, but it produces some beautiful results and can be version controlled.
replies(1): >>43343662 #
ttd ◴[12 Mar 25 14:31 UTC] No.43343662[source]▶
Definitely a personal fan of Graphviz as well! One thing I'm curious about are usecases that require version-controlled diagram sources. Do you guys have e.g. a build step that updates the rendered version somewhere? Or Confluence integration, etc?
replies(2): >>43343971 #>>43348485 #
1. bqmjjx0kac ◴[12 Mar 25 22:44 UTC] No.43348485[source]▶
I work at a BigCorp with a fancy md-to-html generator that supports graphviz via code blocks, e.g.

    ```dot
    digraph { a -> b }
    ```
But day-to-day, I actually use graphviz inside emacs org-mode (and in a private git repo). If you press C-c C-c with your cursor on the code blocks, it plops the rendered graph below.
replies(1): >>43349288 #
2. ttd ◴[13 Mar 25 00:43 UTC] No.43349288[source]▶
TIL org-mode can do that (though I really shouldn't be surprised). Thanks for the info!