Yesterday I had a request from a client for a network diagram for a system I’m designing, and normally I create such drawings as a PNG file. But this client said “no, I need it in Visio, or similar style so we can edit it”. I have avoided Microsoft Visio in the past, mainly because of its price tag: $249.99 for the basic version, and a whopping $999.99 for the premium version!
That’s a lot of moolah for a simple drawing program. But I figured it was time to bite the bullet and just buy it. So I drove to my local Staples and was going to pick up a copy. I actually had it in hand…and then some serendipity happened.
I was passing the table where they have all the laptops, and this fellow was lifting up and looking over a familiar laptop, one that I had gotten for my lovely wife on her birthday and I commented as I was walking by him “That’s a good buy, I bought one for my wife.”. To which he responded. “That’s good to hear, but do you know if it has wireless 3G?”. I started to explain that such options are usually with add-ons, such as special USB wireless dongles sold by cellular companies, but it seemed to baffle him.
So, I explained the differences between WiFi and 3G/4G services and said, “that laptop is probably already connected to WiFi right here in the store, see that Starbucks next door? They have free WiFi”. He was amazed to discover this, even more amazed when I pointed out to him that every McDonald’s in the USA has free WiFi now also, as do most hotels, and some airports.
To which he replied “Well, I suppose I don’t need to pay for 3G then do I?” That struck me, because at that moment, I realized I might not have to pay for Visio either; not because I planned on shoplifting it from the store, but because I hadn’t checked for alternatives yet.
I said, here, let me show you. And I showed him how to connect to WiFi on the laptop, then proceeded to Google “Visio replacement”.
Some hits came up. Most were dead-ends…but one wasn’t, and that’s what I want to share with you today.
Since many WUWT readers are scientists, engineers and business people, they need something like Visio on occasion to map networks, processes, flowcharts, structure trees, etc.
So I want to share “Dia”, short for “Diagram”. Its detailed, open source, and most importantly, free. It also has a community springing up that is adding shape sets for various specialty designs.
From the Dia web page:
Dia is a GTK+ based diagram creation program for GNU/Linux, Unix and Windows released under the GPL license.
Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.
It can load and save diagrams to a custom XML format (gzipped by default, to save space), can export diagrams to a number of formats, including EPS, SVG, XFIG, WMF and PNG, and can print diagrams (including ones that span multiple pages).
We feel Dia is in a state where it can be actively used. Many features are implemented and the code is quite solid and mature. Try downloading Dia and tell us what you think of it. If you find any bugs, please report them with Gnome Bugzilla.
It seems pretty snazzy, and intuitive. I was able to doodle this up within seconds of opening the program:
So, for what I need to do, a networking flow diagram, it’s perfect, and free.
Some other examples for other venues are here.
My advice, get it. You’ve nothing to lose, everything to gain. While you are at it, if you want a simple and easy to use graphing program, may I suggest Dplot, which I also use. It’s a trial, and registration is cheap, and it has paid for itself many times over.
No this isn’t a commercial or paid plug, just stuff I thought I’d share this holiday season with thanks to the guy who needed some help understanding WiFi and 3G. It just goes to show that sometimes, good deeds are repaid.
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Of the thousands of pieces of free software, nothing compares with Blender 3D. Equivalent commercial software costs thousands of dollars. The old UI was its major source of criticism but it has been totally rebuilt in V2.5x.
Blender does everything from fluid simulation, smoke, video editing, 3d or 2d drawing. It is amazing!
Orkneygal mentioned OpenOffice, the free alternative to the Windows Office Suite of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.
NeoOffice is the option for us Mac users
As a technical writer I use a lot of screen captures. I stumbled across Hypersnap about 9 years ago and forked out 25$ because it was well worth it. have used it on a daily basis ever since with only once having to pay for an upgrade (12$) about three years ago even though there have been about 100 upgrades during that time.
It is by far the best screen capture software I’ve ever seen (and definitely the best software purchase I’ve ever made) and I would recommend it to anyone.
Free download here if you want to try it out (I think it leaves a watermark until you buy it)
http://www.hyperionics.com/hsdx/downloads.asp
Try out the window capture with auto-scroll on the WUWT forum. You can capture it as a very long image and save in almost any image format or you can even capture it as rich text and then paste it into a word or excel file.
Lots of free and open source software can be found using these links, check them out!
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ListOfOpenSourcePrograms
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages
I’d just like to confirm that DPlot is excellent – extremely powerful, and handles large data files with ease. Used the trial version for a day or two but it’s such good value that you’d be crazy not to buy the thing – now couldn’t work without it!
OmniGraffle is a good drawing package for the Mac that can output files in visio format.
Yup – graphviz is great – feed in the text file and it outputs a drawing that would take hours by any other method. (Graphviz is open source too).
Anthony, I think that you may have hit upon the reason that Bill Gates et Al (no pun intended) are so keen on Global Warming – they make more money when the people are kept ignorant.
I live in Visio. I had looked at Dia a long time ago and it wasn’t at all ready for prime-time then. I wonder if it is at all useful now.
“Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use”
Right. I make formal diagrams for professional use and must share them with people who have Visio and do not have Dia. So it is still a non-alternative for me. Practically every network engineer in the world has Visio. All equipment vendors produce Visio stencils for their gear. Its nice for someone who might need it for some hobby project, but there really isn’t an alternative for professional use … until Dia learns how to import Visio stencils and export drawings in Visio formation so they can be shared.
I’ve recently begun to use OpenOffice.org for my spreadsheet and document needs. My needs are minimal, home and small business use primarily, but I’ve always been a Microsoft user over the years. My most recent edition of MS Office is — believe it or not — Office 2000, and over the last several months have been meaning to upgrade to a more current version.
Anyways, I think I was prompted after a recent Adobe update, to try OpenOffice. So far, I’ve been fairly happy with it. And, of course, it’s totally free. As a previous user of MS Office, OpenOffice is built intuitively. Not much of a learning curve at all.
I actually marvel at the level to which Microsoft still has such a captive paying customer base. I have no beef with MS (heh, I personally avoided Vista, going from XP straight to Win7, otherwise perhaps I’d have a beef or two), I’m just strictly making an observation.
I use Ubuntu and Windows – if I could replace Visio, Project, and sync my Blackberry on the Linux box (I’ve built and tried the various tools) – the world would warm a little less as the Windows box would go. I wish I could do my part.
Ian H says:
December 15, 2010 at 11:49 am
> I still use Xfig. It is old and the interface is outdated
A long time ago I went looking for some free Unix package that used ASCII files for the draw objects and came across xfig. It only did black & white, but that was fine for the task at hand. (That was to take low level OS timing data and display things graphically via a filter that converted the timing data into boxes and tick marks.) A couple years later it had color support and I was looking for some much more complicated displays showing multiple threads, the cpu they ran on, when they were sleeping, waiting for a cpu, or actually running; whether the thread was in file system, network, or device driver code, etc. The results were instrumental in discovering a significant performance problem I never knew we had. Some of the results are in http://www.connectathon.org/talks02/werme.pdf but E.M Smith may be one of the few people here who would appreciate it.
I need to make a little graphic for new post here, it’ll be an xfig task. It’ll also be junky enough that Anthony might want to redo it.
Can’t believe no one has mentioned alternativeto.net — this is the one-stop shop for finding all apps that are an “alternative to” Product X. alternativeto.net lists 20 alternatives to Visio: http://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-visio/
Speaking of Visio, I recommend that people who do any sort of modeling (such as network diagramming) spend a few bucks and get a real modeling tool. My favorite is Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems (www.sparksystems.com). A modeling tool lets you build a database of elements and relationships to describe any system from multiple points of view. A diagramming tool such as Visio just lets you draw pretty pictures.
Wish I had the background, training, and knowledge to use any or all of these suggestions. How many good people there are and how many good minds who want to share their insights and techniques. Gives one hope and enables one to say Merry Christmas with happiness and gratitude.
Ubuntu is worth the switch for more than just the free stuff! It will take a bit of getting used too, but you wont regret it. I especially like the fact that it wont do anything unless I allow it first. Windows spends more than half it’s time doing sneaky things without permission, and even insists you wait until it is finished before giving you a little control back.
A handy hint if you decide to switch, go to Ubuntu Forums (http://ubuntuforums.org) for help with any issues you may encounter. The folks there actually like to help new users!
The cheaper version of Visio will fulfill your diagramming needs. The ultimate version is essentially for Database design and development. In other words, you can design your database in Visio and then connect to a SQL database management system and create a new database from the Visio design. The ultimate version also allows the reverse engineering of databases and has full integration with Visual Studio.
You get what you pay for but don’t pay for more than you need.
I use Python with the numpy/scipy/pylab modules for numerical analysis and plotting. All free and open source. Fantastic quality software. Python is the best computer language evah!
Thanks for the note on Dia. Should come in handy. Also put in a vote for Freemind, noted above.
Let me also put a good word in for Gimp (does what Adobe Photoshop does) and Inkscape (a fabulous drawing system). Being using both for some time now and I love them.
My minuscule contribution:
http://mediaconverter.org
I’ll also confirm that Dplot is good value. I have used it to make a plot of a time series with almost two million data points, no problem.
Golly listening to all the stuff about free, not having to pay for anything, and what a great ride, I thought I was accidentally on the Cancun site for the IPCC.
Or perhaps I was reading a site dedicated to Karl Marx?
People should keep in mind the whole concept of royal or royalty is something that western society has adopted in granting to individuals what we call intellectual property rights. This concept of intellectual property rights is very much which made North America and the western societies great. The open source movement is a movement which seeks to remove the concept of granting individual property rights for work done.
The farther down the road you go and the more you seek to remove things like intellectual property rights results then that you can manufacture and build things anywhere in the world and import them here.
I can guarantee you that if China and in fact even European countries of the world did not have to pay for an Intel processor, they would not do so. In fact there’s a movement among government and nations to push forward an open source processor design. In other words just set up a fab plant and start stamping out your own processors. And in fact a lot of countries of the world want to do exactly that with drugs also.
In Europe they recently fined Microsoft ½ billion dollars for trying to include a windows media player. One that has been part of windows since windows 3.0, and was out long before the likes of RealAudio and those other companies that were complaining to the socialist EU (so it was included in 1990).
I’m pretty sure most readers here will gather that there’s not a heck of a lot of difference between the UN and the EU.
Furthermore most of the Governments of the EU are now demanding that any software contractor use open source software. This simply means in a fact that we have to sign away all of our IP rights to that government if we want any work. Gee perhaps what’s next, any coffee or pop that a government office purchases has to manufactured and grown on socialized public funded land and none that owned by private individuals anymore? Wow!
I hope readers here realize about 17 years ago Al Gore was making the rounds pushing free trade and fighting the likes of Ross Perot for this very issue of trade and intellectual property rights. It always seems the same gang of the elite crooks brew up these things to destroy the west. This simply means once again the west is to give away the things that we’ve earned and worked so hard to provide and obtain a great standard of living that we have in the west.
This is a whole thing again like the use of energy and fossil fuels that is in a way of victim of its own success since the use of energy provides such a great and comfortable standard a living for us.
I also found it confusing and so hard to believe that in the latest rounds of elections in California, the people voted back in so many socialists and even voted for the dirty carbon tax. On the other hand once a society reaches a little over 50% of the people in that their voting means they receive more for voting in government services then it cost them, then you PASSED a tipping point and down that spiral you go.
On the other hand looking at the comments here, and everybody talking about free and not having to pay for these things, I realize that Karl Marx and socialism is alive and well among the readers here.
At the end of the day one of the great things of our western society is that we build great products, we pay good money for them, and this creates value in our economy.
The fact the matter is at the end of the day the new version of word is an astoundingly well engineered product. It loads at least 4 times faster then open office, is far more stable and has some really amazing features like inserting of formulas.
Furthermore on a dell laptop, I seen word included for an additional $30.00 (so it’s not really expensive depending on the kind of bundling you get).
Now I am not going to stand here and tell everybody that they should run out and purchase Visio, but I do want them to keep in mind that for the most part the open source movement is being funded by large government projects and large companies pumping in money that seek to destroy the western concept of granting rights of ownership to people’s intellectual work.
Companies like IBM are into selling and leasing equipment, to run your business. And IBM is just like Las Vegas that loves cheap airline flights to keep people coming, we see major portions of corporate industry that don’t like having to pay for software. These companies thus support things like free trade or actively fund software projects that reduce the ability to attach intellectual property rights and ownership to that software.
So while I don’t mind some people making a choice to deciding to use open source software, if it seems like too good of the deal to be true, it probably is, and also means it just represents another nail in the coffin of destroying a bunch of great American Industries. I mean for years in California, all these government organizations on the socialist Dole seemed to have an true paradise of the socialist dream. However now the party is over, and eventually will have to be new Capital Investment in California for that economy to create jobs, and the same thing will happen in the open source movement. However with continued pumping money into the open source movement, especially by the European nations that are now specifying open source must be part of their purchasing, then it’s no different than supporting certain companies that will only purchase goods and services from unionized or non privately owned farms for example.
We see the same thing around the world today with some of these drug companies that have made some marvelous incredible drugs, yet charge a high price for those drugs. Those third world countries are arguing they should not have to pay for these prices yet reap the benefits of the investments and toil and work that was done in the west to create those drugs. And now we see the same thing with the open source software movement, they want the benefits of the software, yet no granting of intellectual property rights for use of that software. It is oh so great when things are free! Just ask the folks having a great big free party in Cancun.
And a course in Cancun, because we built all our great western economies using fossil fuels, were supposed to be penalized and transfer wealth and money to these nations for the simple FACT of our success.
So I think it is important to point out that the great western economies were built around the concept of granting intellectual property rights, be it the great companies like Hewlett Packard, Eastman Kodak, Dr. Land at Polaroid, or companies like Microsoft that built the incredible office suite. These are good things, and not something to be hated or bashed or put down in the name of socialism and getting everything for free as the people here are so happy to point out.
We all need to realize there’s a good use for these products and people are wiling purchase billions of dollars of Coca-Cola, or billions of dollars of software because they see the incredible value that these products represents .
Do keep in mind it is at the end of the day this idea of not having to pay for these products is an anti west and anti intellectual property rights movement, and it seeks to remove rights of ownership of people’s work which is really a pillar and foundation of what our western society was built on.
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
Don’t forget gnuplot! Unless someone else already brought it up…
And since the Gimp has already been brought up, Paint.net is very nice.
I saw a comment on desktop publishing – but nobody has mentioned Scribus!
Find it here: http://www.scribus.net/”
[ Fixed link, was not in display part. -MOD ]
Hmmm… address didn’t post (try again): http://www.scribus.net/
Thanks Anthony.
Merry Christmas!
Great thread. When I was IT guy for a smallish branch of a large corporation, I was one of the few that took licensing seriously. One day, the Federales descended on the parent company with search warrants and found hundreds of pirate copies of major software. The company was fined thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, Micro-Bloat-o-soft has put dozens of innovation companies out of business and prevented further investment in hundreds of others, So I have no qualms about using competing software, especially if it’s free. This is part of the capitalistic process.