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I'm working on a new app for creating technical diagrams - https://vexlio.com https://vexlio.com. It's an area with some heavyweight incumbents (e.g. Visio, Luc

by ttd 1y ago

I'm working on a new app for creating technical diagrams - https://vexlio.com https://vexlio.com. It's an area with some heavyweight incumbents (e.g. Visio, Lucid) but I think there's good opportunity here to differentiate in simplicity and overall experience. I'm still in the fairly early phase, and I suspect I haven't quite found the best match of features to customers yet. From a dev perspective this area has a ton of super interesting algorithmic / math / data structure applications, and computational geometry has always been special to me. It's a lot of fun to work on. If anyone here is interested in this as a user, I'd love for any feedback or comments, here or you can email me directly: tyler@vexlio.com. Some pages the HN crowd might be interested in: * https://vexlio.com/blog/making-diagrams-with-syntax-highlighted-code-snippets/ https://vexlio.com/blog/making-diagrams-with-syntax-highligh... * https://vexlio.com/solutions/state-diagram-maker/ https://vexlio.com/solutions/state-diagram-maker/ * https://vexlio.com/blog/speed-up-your-overleaf-workflow-fast-diagramming-with-vexlio/ https://vexlio.com/blog/speed-up-your-overleaf-workflow-fast...

jppope 1y ago
really nice work. I'm going to give it a roll!
- ttd 1y ago
  Thank you! If you end up having any feedback, definitely feel free to drop it here, or email if you prefer.
ginger_beer_m 1y ago
seamless latex integration is a winner for me!! will definitely spread the words for this
- ttd 1y ago
  Awesome, thank you! If you or your colleagues have other LaTeX-related goals or wishes, do let me know. There's a lot of untapped opportunity there as well (IMHO).
nikodunk 1y ago
Looks great, and smart differentiation!
- ttd 1y ago
  Cheers, thank you!
Malazath 1y ago
Actually right up my alley. I have many frustrations and reservations against the current offerings. Super excited to see a new player enter the field
- ttd 1y ago
  Would love to hear those frustrations and reservations - drop me a line if you're interested in sharing: tyler@vexlio.com.
sixpackpg 1y ago
In the off chance you haven't seen Bret Victor, your app reminds me of him, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGYGl_xxfXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGYGl_xxfXA
santana16 1y ago
Visio and Lucid are trying to cover everything at the expense of practical convenience. Pick a lane and stick to it. Good luck!!!
- ttd 1y ago
  Definitely seems to be the case from my observation as well. Appreciate it!
EnnEmmEss 1y ago
It looks like a pretty interesting product so I really hate to be that guy but the FAQ page at https://vexlio.com/faq/ https://vexlio.com/faq/ straight up doesn't work (whenever I click any of the questions, it does nothing). Also, wanted to know if there was anything in the pipeline to get a Desktop application which would work offline. In several places in the enterprise world especially, I do feel there would be scope for that. I would definitely pay for a desktop version which worked offline for example.
- ttd 1y ago
  Whoops - FAQ issue should be fixed if you refresh (if it's still broken, give it some time for caches to be invalidated). Thanks for mentioning that! Re: desktop version. The short answer is yes, probably, but I don't have a concrete timeline. I made tech and architecture choices from the beginning to make sure a cross-platform desktop version always remains possible. Frankly, the biggest obstacle for desktop is not the app itself, but distribution and figuring out a pricing model. The current solution for enterprise, business, and other interested people, is to self-host Vexlio, with separate licensing.
  - EnnEmmEss 1y ago
    FAQ works fine for me now.
noleary 1y ago
oh cool! I want to try this soon.
saboot 1y ago
This looks really cool. An application I would use this for is to generate code for FPGAs, as finite state machines are very common. This is an example, https://terostechnology.github.io/terosHDLdoc/docs/guides/state_machine_viewer/examples https://terostechnology.github.io/terosHDLdoc/docs/guides/st... But it only outputs an SVG, and there are no tools (AFAIK) that go from diagram to code, which should easy to setup. So I'd consider extending this to both generate code and read in code and make these nice interactive diagrams.
- ttd 1y ago
  Thank you for the feedback! This is a great idea and definitely fits into the vision. Do you know if the FPGA and/or hardware communities use any type of formalism for design or documentation of state machines? One example of what I mean is is Harel statecharts - essentially a formalized type of nested state diagram.
calmoo 1y ago
Gave it a quick try and it's really nice, the aesthetic defaults are great. One thing I found unintuitive: I should be able to connect objects without having to select a new tool (the anchor points on hover should be clickable in any tool mode so I can connect objects on the fly). Overall amazing though, will be using!
- ttd 1y ago
  Thanks for this feedback! This is one of those quality-of-life features that I think are really important for the overall experience - I will be adding this.
imtringued 1y ago
Unless you intend to be acquired by Overleaf I don't really see a future for your business to be honest.
splice-cad 1y ago
Looks great! Your editor design is beautiful.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Looks really good an seems intuitive (from just browsing the landing page). Will look more deeply. Diagram-as-code option? ie. a language syntax from which a diagram can be generated? I find a lot of the time taken up in doing diagrams is laying them out properly and then having to rearrange them when it grows beyond a certain size. This may,however, be an old-man Visio user problem that's been better solved by more recent options...
- ttd 1y ago
  Some type of programmatic diagram creation is definitely something I'm interested in supporting. It's not clear to me how large the audience would be, so it's been hard to prioritize.
NotAnOtter 1y ago
What's your long term revenue model? Enterprise licensing? Donation based? Hosting fees with value-add mark up?
sebmellen 1y ago
Super cool. Do you consider yourself to be a competitor with Mermaid?
- ttd 1y ago
  Thanks! I would say no. Mermaid is strongly code-first diagramming, which is an excellent usecase and niche in its own right. I would be surprised if Mermaid ended up with a WYSIWYG editor on top of it, since that is pretty counter to its philosophy (as far as I understand anyway).
boxcarr 1y ago
Looks pretty great! The free tier also looks reasonable. The pricing on the other tiers isn't outrageous either if you use it consistently. Unfortunately, I likely find myself in the big gap between the free tier and the Basic plan. I can't justify yet another subscription that I use only a couple of times a year. That said, I would happily pay the $6 on the months that I use the service. Given the churn issues, I'm surprised more SaaS offerings don't work that way.
- ttd 1y ago
  Thank you for sharing this perspective! Your proposal is potentially a good middle ground, and I will certainly give this some thought.
dardeaup 1y ago
Super impressive! Your software product looks phenomenal and your website is also extremely nice! Best of luck to you.
phkahler 1y ago
Years ago I was making a diagram editor with the intent of doing code generation from diagrams (like simulink, not stateflow). I started with splines for the connections and decided straight lines and junctions would be better for complex diagrams. I realized that a better way to internally define the connecting wires is via a set of lines and their connectivity (vs their endpoint coordinates). Imagine each line segment is defined by a direction (vertical or horizontal) and a position (perpendicular distance from the origin) Like ax+by=d where a and b are either 0 or 1. You also need to define which other lines it connects to. Given the list of connections you can then calculate the intersections at rendering time. By sorting the list of connections you can render the line without features at the start and end, and then draw junctions for any intermediate connections. The beauty of this would be to allow dragging blocks around and having the lines follow with the junctions passing through each other as needed. There is some housekeeping with this data structure (merging colinear segments that connect, breaking segments when needed) but the UI for dragging should be much better than anything out there.
- ttd 1y ago
  Interesting - do you have a writeup or a demo available somewhere? What types of junctions were you envisioning?
  - phkahler 1y ago
    In the links you posted (2 comments up) there is a PID controller. Out of the difference block the signal splits 3 ways. In Simulink that junction would just be a round dot where the lines meet. In most diagram editors that junction would probably have 5 lines connected to it. In my scheme there would be one horizontal line right through it and one vertical line. There would also be 2 short horizontal lines connecting the vertical line to the P and D blocks. In my scheme you could drag the D block up to the top above the P (D,P,I) and the junctions would change (because they're locations are computed) even though the topology has not. I never did a full implementation. email me at gmail if you want a better explanation or a quick drawing.
MicheleLacorte 1y ago
Nice project, congratulations, it would be cool to see it integrated into LaTex, what do you think?
ygreif 1y ago
Looks neat. I'm a LucidChart user. One thing I'd like to see is the text going inside the shapes more automagically
- ttd 1y ago
  Thank you for checking it out! What sort of text auto-magic are you looking for?

by ttd 1y ago

jppope 1y ago

really nice work. I'm going to give it a roll!

ttd 1y ago
Thank you! If you end up having any feedback, definitely feel free to drop it here, or email if you prefer.

ginger_beer_m 1y ago

seamless latex integration is a winner for me!! will definitely spread the words for this

ttd 1y ago
Awesome, thank you! If you or your colleagues have other LaTeX-related goals or wishes, do let me know. There's a lot of untapped opportunity there as well (IMHO).

nikodunk 1y ago

Looks great, and smart differentiation!

ttd 1y ago
Cheers, thank you!

Malazath 1y ago

Actually right up my alley. I have many frustrations and reservations against the current offerings. Super excited to see a new player enter the field

ttd 1y ago
Would love to hear those frustrations and reservations - drop me a line if you're interested in sharing: tyler@vexlio.com.

sixpackpg 1y ago

In the off chance you haven't seen Bret Victor, your app reminds me of him, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGYGl_xxfXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGYGl_xxfXA

santana16 1y ago

Visio and Lucid are trying to cover everything at the expense of practical convenience. Pick a lane and stick to it. Good luck!!!

ttd 1y ago
Definitely seems to be the case from my observation as well. Appreciate it!

EnnEmmEss 1y ago

It looks like a pretty interesting product so I really hate to be that guy but the FAQ page at https://vexlio.com/faq/ https://vexlio.com/faq/ straight up doesn't work (whenever I click any of the questions, it does nothing). Also, wanted to know if there was anything in the pipeline to get a Desktop application which would work offline. In several places in the enterprise world especially, I do feel there would be scope for that. I would definitely pay for a desktop version which worked offline for example.

ttd 1y ago
Whoops - FAQ issue should be fixed if you refresh (if it's still broken, give it some time for caches to be invalidated). Thanks for mentioning that! Re: desktop version. The short answer is yes, probably, but I don't have a concrete timeline. I made tech and architecture choices from the beginning to make sure a cross-platform desktop version always remains possible. Frankly, the biggest obstacle for desktop is not the app itself, but distribution and figuring out a pricing model. The current solution for enterprise, business, and other interested people, is to self-host Vexlio, with separate licensing.
- EnnEmmEss 1y ago
  FAQ works fine for me now.

noleary 1y ago

oh cool! I want to try this soon.

saboot 1y ago

This looks really cool. An application I would use this for is to generate code for FPGAs, as finite state machines are very common. This is an example, https://terostechnology.github.io/terosHDLdoc/docs/guides/state_machine_viewer/examples https://terostechnology.github.io/terosHDLdoc/docs/guides/st... But it only outputs an SVG, and there are no tools (AFAIK) that go from diagram to code, which should easy to setup. So I'd consider extending this to both generate code and read in code and make these nice interactive diagrams.

ttd 1y ago
Thank you for the feedback! This is a great idea and definitely fits into the vision. Do you know if the FPGA and/or hardware communities use any type of formalism for design or documentation of state machines? One example of what I mean is is Harel statecharts - essentially a formalized type of nested state diagram.

calmoo 1y ago

Gave it a quick try and it's really nice, the aesthetic defaults are great. One thing I found unintuitive: I should be able to connect objects without having to select a new tool (the anchor points on hover should be clickable in any tool mode so I can connect objects on the fly). Overall amazing though, will be using!

ttd 1y ago
Thanks for this feedback! This is one of those quality-of-life features that I think are really important for the overall experience - I will be adding this.

imtringued 1y ago

Unless you intend to be acquired by Overleaf I don't really see a future for your business to be honest.

splice-cad 1y ago

Looks great! Your editor design is beautiful.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

Looks really good an seems intuitive (from just browsing the landing page). Will look more deeply. Diagram-as-code option? ie. a language syntax from which a diagram can be generated? I find a lot of the time taken up in doing diagrams is laying them out properly and then having to rearrange them when it grows beyond a certain size. This may,however, be an old-man Visio user problem that's been better solved by more recent options...

ttd 1y ago
Some type of programmatic diagram creation is definitely something I'm interested in supporting. It's not clear to me how large the audience would be, so it's been hard to prioritize.

NotAnOtter 1y ago

What's your long term revenue model? Enterprise licensing? Donation based? Hosting fees with value-add mark up?

sebmellen 1y ago

Super cool. Do you consider yourself to be a competitor with Mermaid?

ttd 1y ago
Thanks! I would say no. Mermaid is strongly code-first diagramming, which is an excellent usecase and niche in its own right. I would be surprised if Mermaid ended up with a WYSIWYG editor on top of it, since that is pretty counter to its philosophy (as far as I understand anyway).

boxcarr 1y ago

Looks pretty great! The free tier also looks reasonable. The pricing on the other tiers isn't outrageous either if you use it consistently. Unfortunately, I likely find myself in the big gap between the free tier and the Basic plan. I can't justify yet another subscription that I use only a couple of times a year. That said, I would happily pay the $6 on the months that I use the service. Given the churn issues, I'm surprised more SaaS offerings don't work that way.

ttd 1y ago
Thank you for sharing this perspective! Your proposal is potentially a good middle ground, and I will certainly give this some thought.

dardeaup 1y ago

Super impressive! Your software product looks phenomenal and your website is also extremely nice! Best of luck to you.

phkahler 1y ago

Years ago I was making a diagram editor with the intent of doing code generation from diagrams (like simulink, not stateflow). I started with splines for the connections and decided straight lines and junctions would be better for complex diagrams. I realized that a better way to internally define the connecting wires is via a set of lines and their connectivity (vs their endpoint coordinates). Imagine each line segment is defined by a direction (vertical or horizontal) and a position (perpendicular distance from the origin) Like ax+by=d where a and b are either 0 or 1. You also need to define which other lines it connects to. Given the list of connections you can then calculate the intersections at rendering time. By sorting the list of connections you can render the line without features at the start and end, and then draw junctions for any intermediate connections. The beauty of this would be to allow dragging blocks around and having the lines follow with the junctions passing through each other as needed. There is some housekeeping with this data structure (merging colinear segments that connect, breaking segments when needed) but the UI for dragging should be much better than anything out there.

ttd 1y ago
Interesting - do you have a writeup or a demo available somewhere? What types of junctions were you envisioning?
- phkahler 1y ago
  In the links you posted (2 comments up) there is a PID controller. Out of the difference block the signal splits 3 ways. In Simulink that junction would just be a round dot where the lines meet. In most diagram editors that junction would probably have 5 lines connected to it. In my scheme there would be one horizontal line right through it and one vertical line. There would also be 2 short horizontal lines connecting the vertical line to the P and D blocks. In my scheme you could drag the D block up to the top above the P (D,P,I) and the junctions would change (because they're locations are computed) even though the topology has not. I never did a full implementation. email me at gmail if you want a better explanation or a quick drawing.

MicheleLacorte 1y ago

Nice project, congratulations, it would be cool to see it integrated into LaTex, what do you think?

ygreif 1y ago

Looks neat. I'm a LucidChart user. One thing I'd like to see is the text going inside the shapes more automagically

ttd 1y ago
Thank you for checking it out! What sort of text auto-magic are you looking for?