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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: 0.435s | 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. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[13 Mar 25 09:29 UTC] No.43351613[source]▶
https://mermaid.live/ ! Mostly because it lets me generate my diagrams in code rather than drawing them out by hand, which means I can version control them, as well as generate said code from human-language descriptions given to ChatGPT. Sequence diagrams are an especially favorite of mine.

There are a few good options in the code to SVG (PNG, JPG, whatever) space besides Mermaid. The venerable graphviz has been around since the 90s, I think, and uses the DOT language. The newer D2 language probably has the nicest overall aesthetics as well: https://play.d2lang.com/

replies(1): >>43372924 #
2. manishsharan ◴[15 Mar 25 14:55 UTC] No.43372924[source]▶
Thanks for posting this. I can not t use Graphviz as the diagrams look too amateurish to be shared in a presentation . But D2 diagrams look amazing and polished. I will try it out and maybe I can finally get rid of Visio. I find working with Visio very tedious.