5 ms·

Ask HN: What are you using for system architecture diagraming?

6 points by dpeck 11y ago

Time to start doing some system diagramming to explain my design to others on the team and get feedback. Is Visio still the best option? Or has something else gotten your attention lately?

mattkrea 11y ago
My personal favorite (on Mac) is Monodraw (http://monodraw.helftone.com/ http://monodraw.helftone.com/)
- blub 11y ago
  How does this compare to Omnigraffle? Too bad I didn't find it when looking for such a tool.
  - mattkrea 11y ago
    Omnigraffle works fine but I prefer this solely because of the ASCII output
nostrademons 11y ago
Don't underestimate the effectiveness of 3x5 cards & string, or of whiteboards. Particularly if you want to change your design in addition to just documenting it. It won't be persistent (unless you take a photo of it), but you can really quickly iterate and find opportunities for simplification.
dwwoelfel 11y ago
I'm building a generic collaborative prototyping tool that I think works well for infrastructure diagrams, especially if you want something a bit more free-form. I wrote up a short tutorial here: https://precursorapp.com/blog/diagramming-with-precursor https://precursorapp.com/blog/diagramming-with-precursor
- Yadi 11y ago
  Looks pretty neat! Any plans to move it to mobile for touch surfaces?
Yadi 11y ago
Big white papers are the best! I love sketching it out a few times, and throw some of them. Until it reaches a diagram that I would actually like, then I will transform it to this FREE googleDrive tool called (draw.io).
hbcondo714 11y ago
I'm a long time user of Visio but lately I've been using online diagram tools like Gliffy, especially for some UML.
AdieuToLogic 11y ago
ArgoUML[1] is pretty decent, though has few updates recently. 1 - http://argouml.tigris.org http://argouml.tigris.org
- benlaud 11y ago
  +1 for ArgoUML. After created the diagram, I usually just did a C&P to Google Docs / Evernote as document. It is very convenience.
kalagan 11y ago
I used Dia (http://dia-installer.de/ http://dia-installer.de/) and Lucidchart (https://www.lucidchart.com https://www.lucidchart.com) in the past. It's not ideal but it can do the job.
blub 11y ago
Visio is terrible at UML. Fortunately there are 3rd party stencils available which make it much better. Whatever you do, go for a drawing tool (Visio, Omnigraffle) and not a UML tool (Visual paradigm, Enterprise architect). The latter are too complicated and expect that the diagram is correct from a UML standard perspective, which unless you're generating code is useless and cumbersome to do.

6 points by dpeck 11y ago

Time to start doing some system diagramming to explain my design to others on the team and get feedback. Is Visio still the best option? Or has something else gotten your attention lately?

mattkrea 11y ago

My personal favorite (on Mac) is Monodraw (http://monodraw.helftone.com/ http://monodraw.helftone.com/)

blub 11y ago
How does this compare to Omnigraffle? Too bad I didn't find it when looking for such a tool.
- mattkrea 11y ago
  Omnigraffle works fine but I prefer this solely because of the ASCII output

nostrademons 11y ago

Don't underestimate the effectiveness of 3x5 cards & string, or of whiteboards. Particularly if you want to change your design in addition to just documenting it. It won't be persistent (unless you take a photo of it), but you can really quickly iterate and find opportunities for simplification.

dwwoelfel 11y ago

I'm building a generic collaborative prototyping tool that I think works well for infrastructure diagrams, especially if you want something a bit more free-form. I wrote up a short tutorial here: https://precursorapp.com/blog/diagramming-with-precursor https://precursorapp.com/blog/diagramming-with-precursor

Yadi 11y ago
Looks pretty neat! Any plans to move it to mobile for touch surfaces?

Yadi 11y ago

Big white papers are the best! I love sketching it out a few times, and throw some of them. Until it reaches a diagram that I would actually like, then I will transform it to this FREE googleDrive tool called (draw.io).

hbcondo714 11y ago

I'm a long time user of Visio but lately I've been using online diagram tools like Gliffy, especially for some UML.

AdieuToLogic 11y ago

ArgoUML[1] is pretty decent, though has few updates recently. 1 - http://argouml.tigris.org http://argouml.tigris.org

benlaud 11y ago
+1 for ArgoUML. After created the diagram, I usually just did a C&P to Google Docs / Evernote as document. It is very convenience.

kalagan 11y ago

I used Dia (http://dia-installer.de/ http://dia-installer.de/) and Lucidchart (https://www.lucidchart.com https://www.lucidchart.com) in the past. It's not ideal but it can do the job.

blub 11y ago

Visio is terrible at UML. Fortunately there are 3rd party stencils available which make it much better. Whatever you do, go for a drawing tool (Visio, Omnigraffle) and not a UML tool (Visual paradigm, Enterprise architect). The latter are too complicated and expect that the diagram is correct from a UML standard perspective, which unless you're generating code is useless and cumbersome to do.