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Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

61 points ttd | 1 comments | 12 Mar 25 14:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.293s | 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. atoav ◴[15 Mar 25 10:09 UTC] No.43371432[source]▶
As others mentioned mermaid and graphviz already, I want to throw in two slightly more obscure ways:

schemdraw (python library) is a library for drawing beautiful circuit diagrams. It has a surprisingly effective flowchart part as well, that allows you even to draw custom beziers arrows and stuff. You can do manual positioning of everything, which is sometimes an anonoyance with mermaid. Outputs to svg or png. https://schemdraw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

matplotlib (python library), people know it for drawing charts and such things, but if you want to build your own drawings that deviate strongly from existing solutions, all the drawing primitives are in there. See for example: https://matplotlib.org/matplotblog/posts/mpl-for-making-diag...

And for just wrapping your head around something, a piece of paper and a sharpened pencil are surprisingly effective at not wasting your time.