Comments on: Networking Diagramming on the Mac

By: slowe

slowe — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:12:58 +0000

Damian,

Yes, I could, and actually ended up doing that later on. It works reasonably well, but reading XML stencils would still be better.

Michael,

I’m loath to switch applications, having invested time and money into OGP (which I really like, by the way). However, the idea of using SVG as a cross-platform transport may be a good idea. It looks like I can export OGP diagrams as SVG, so I’ll have to give that a try and see how it works.

Thanks for everyone’s feedback!

By: Michael Nielsen

Michael Nielsen — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:02:43 +0000

Using InkScape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ ) has made my cross-platform life a lot easier; open source, free, Windows / MacOS X / Linux, stable, feature rich. (I’m not affiliated in anyway — but I do a lot of cross-platform work.) Also makes it nice to store these svg files in subversion, convert to png (or other formats) for inclusion in OpenOffice as an external file. (When the image is updated, the OOo file is updated.)

(Now, if reusable “components” are stored as (standard) SVG, life would be good…)

By: Damian

Damian — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:43:35 +0000

Could you create a visio drawing with all the stencils and export that as an XML drawing. Then import that into OGP and create stencils from the drawing instead?

By: slowe

slowe — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:53:25 +0000

Darin,

I already had an earlier version of OmniGraffle Pro, so it was far cheaper to upgrade to the latest version of OGP than to purchase an entirely different application. My only real complaint with OGP is that it reads Visio XML drawings, but not Visio XML stencils. If OGP could open Visio XML stencils, then I could transport a large number of the shapes that are available for Visio 2002/2003 into OGP for use in my network diagrams.

I don’t use Project (anymore), so I haven’t really had to address that particular issue. For the few projects that did require MS Project, I just run it in a Windows XP VM (I’m on a MacBook Pro with the Core 2 Duo running VMware Fusion beta).

Thanks for the info.

Scott

By: Darin Lory

Darin Lory — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 06:06:12 +0000

Scott,

I was trying to do the same thing with Omnigraffle. I found ConceptDraw Netdiagrammer.

http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/netdiagrammer/main.php

They even have a website for free conversions of your VSD to VDX(XML) files.

http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/visio/

It looks like most of there products read and write XML files.

It’s looks a little pricey…..$250

I use AEC Software’s FastTrack Scheduler 9 for a substitute for MS Project. It reads and writes Project files. They have Mac as well as Windows versions.

I happened on an older copy of Scheduler version 7 for $29 at an Apple Store and paid $49 to upgrade to version 8. They were really happy about how cheap I got it. They got me for Schedule 9…..$149.

Still a great bargain.

-Darin

By: slowe

slowe — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 03:31:44 +0000

Will do, Patrick. Thanks!

By: Patrick Crowley

Patrick Crowley — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 03:04:39 +0000

Hey, Scott!

Drop me a line if you need help adding stencils to Graffletopia.

By: slowe

slowe — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:17:42 +0000

That would be great! As a systems engineer, network diagramming is a big part of what I do every day, so anything that makes that easier is a good thing.

By: Ken Case

Ken Case — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:00:04 +0000

If there isn’t a faster process, there sure should be! We’ll look into this on our end to see if there’s something we can do to make that process easier in OmniGraffle itself.

Thanks for sharing your experience!