Drawing with Dia
Looking for an alternative to Visio? I was. I needed a simple drawing program that was up to the task of doing network diagrams. I found Dia and, even though it’s not yet up to version 1, (I’m using the 0.97 pre-release version) and it’s so far working out fine.
The developers point out that “Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. ”
That sums it up well.Libraries include networks, UML, flowcharts, chemical engineering, a small set of isometric map objects and a few others — enough for casual use.
Export formats include JPG, EPS, SVG, XFIG, WMF and PNG.
Dia runs under Unix, Linux and Windows. I’m running the Windows version, which was an easy install, since it came as a binary package bundled in a windows installer. It would be a bit more convenient if it remembered file paths and window configurations from one session to the next.
It’s available for download on the Dia home page: http://live.gnome.org/Dia
Additional shape libraries are available at: http://dia-installer.de/shapes.html