3 ms·
Diagrams is a great drag-and-drop tool, but drag-and-drop tools shouldn't be used for serious system diagramming: https://www.ilograph.com/blog/posts/its-time-t
by Veuxdo 5y ago
Diagrams is a great drag-and-drop tool, but drag-and-drop tools shouldn't be used for serious system diagramming: https://www.ilograph.com/blog/posts/its-time-to-drop-drag-and-drop-diagram-tools/ https://www.ilograph.com/blog/posts/its-time-to-drop-drag-an...
- beachy 5y agoWe opted for Mermaid (mentioned in your article) and auto-layout in our new offering. As you would expect, it has its pros and its cons. As diagrams get bigger and more complex, mermaid's auto-layout gets more and more challenged and more and more acres of white space start to appear. Of course drawing those same large diagrams manually would be a bitch too. At small scale, auto-layout is a no-brainer, but the jury is still out for us on large, real world diagrams.
- lmc 5y agoTake a look at Structurizr - https://structurizr.com/ https://structurizr.com/ The guy that makes it is super helpful on twitter as well. Ah, I've just realised, the article above pointed to a quote by Simon Brown - he is the Structurizr guy :-)
- beachy 5y agoThanks for the link. All the examples look pretty simple and only use straight line connectors. We're building a no-code for HR platform, so the diagrams are large and really need curved connectors to maximise use of the space.
- lmc 5y agoGot it, diagrams are part of your product, rather than for system design.
- alexott 5y agoI like PlantUML a lot
- mnahkies 5y agoI completely agree with the sentiment of that post. I've generally always found it difficult to find something in this space that produces a layout that's easy to follow, and easy to experiment with. I think I'd like something that had: - layout constraints similar to the android relative layout - something like excalidraw that could dump the hand drawn diagram out to code for a bit of cleanup before going into VCS I'm imagining you could solve the ability to inject new sections with the constraints relatively easily but still retain a good amount of creative control to better tell the story. Any suggestions for tools to checkout?
- chrisweekly 5y agoIt's a slight tangent but as an Obsidian user, the Obsidian-Excalidraw plugin^1 is kind of jaw-droppingly, amazingly good at combining the many things each tool does well into a seamless, customizable UX. 1. https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
- politician 5y agoIt’s sad that nothing beats OmniGraffle. Ideally, I want diagrams-as-code with a supporting layout-as-code document for fine-tuning the presentation and a wysiwyg tool for manipulating that layout-as-code document. But I understand why none of this exists: the MVP is too big.
- dtjb 5y agoDifferent uses for different audiences. That article addresses engineering use cases. But diagramming is also useful when discussing (and constantly revising) concepts and workflows with business users before any code is written. Drag and drop fits the bill just fine there.
- wafer-bw 5y agoThe way that article suggests adding more ELBs to the diagram would take a lot of work with a drag and drop tool is hilariously bad, maybe the author should learn how to use drag and drop tools or maybe they are using terrible ones that don't let you also drag to select?
- davnn 5y agoIt would probably be possible to write a layout engine for diagrams to get the best of both worlds. Would be great for some drawing, other diagrams work well with drag and drop.