Visio (formerly Microsoft Office Visio) is a diagramming and vector graphics application and is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Visio allows you to create professional diagrams to simplify complex information with updated shapes, collaboration tools and data-linked diagrams. While Visio is one of the best tools to create diagrams, it does not come free, it is a part of Office suite and not affordable for all. So if you cannot afford the Visio, there are many free alternatives available. Although the alternative free tools available might not be as good as Visio, you can still get most of the useful and important features. In this article, we will explorer the best free alternatives to Microsoft Visio.
Posted on Jan 27, 2015 9:35 AM. Reply I have this question too. Edraw Max is the Visio alternative for mac OSX. It has the Windows and Linux version too.
Open Office Draw: Open Office is a free suite of tools which is very similar to Microsoft Office suite and it also comes with an application similar to Visio, Draw. Gives you the tools to communicate with graphics and diagrams.
With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is powerful tool for technical or general posters, etc. You can import graphics from all common formats (including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF). Use Draw‘s free ability to create Flash (.swf) versions of your work. There is also which also comes with Drawing tool which is very much similar to Open Office. Draw.io: is an online diagramming application built for speed, reliability and simplicity. It features the full range of visual configuration you expect, as well as web application features such as a full range of export options, a large collection of icons, real-time collaboration and embedded widget sharing. You do not have to install any thing on your PC.
Further, you can save all your work on as the service has integration. Pencil Project: is built for the purpose of providing a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool that people can easily install and use to create mock ups in popular desktop platforms. Pencil provides various built-in shapes collection for drawing different types of user interface ranging from desktop to mobile platforms. Starting from 2.0.2, Pencil is shipped with Android and iOS UI stencils pre-installed. This makes it even easier to start using.
It is available across multiple platforms including, Mac, Linux and also available as for. Dia Diagram Editor: is yet another cross platform program to draw structured diagrams. With Dia, you can create flowcharts, UML diagrams, network processes and architectures, entity relationship diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) to draw the shape. Dia loads and saves diagrams in a custom XML format, which is, by default, gzipped to save space, and can print large diagrams spanning multiple pages.
![Acrobat pro alternative for mac Acrobat pro alternative for mac](http://www.techonia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Install-Microsoft-Visio-Mac-installation-progress.png)
It can also be scripted using the Python programming language.
My fellow Visio MVP, John Marshall (see ), pointed out recently that Lucid Software claim to have a Visio for Mac application that offers import and export of real Visio files. Well, although I would love to have a web-edition of Visio from Microsoft, I was interested to discover if the claims are true so I signed up for a trial. I present my findings below, based on just one Visio document that I have used in this blog before ( see ). My conclusion is if you use Visio for high quality vector graphics or for any type of business intelligence then wait for Microsoft to do it right! Please do not even consider round tripping Visio files to Lucidcharts and back, because you will be extremely disappointed. I took an earlier version of this document, without the extra callouts that I added after Microsoft moved the video files to YouTube, which has just two pages and was 673 kb in size in Visio 2013 vsdx file format.
Lucidchart can import Visio files in the pre-2013 binary or XML, or the newer Open Packaging Convention zipped up XML format. I did not bother to try a vsdm file because I cannot see anyway that Lucidchart could claim to preserve VBA macros! Lucidchart can import Visio files The Visio files can be the pre-2013 binary or XML, I did not attempt to do any work in Lucidchart after the import because there was no integrity left in the Visio shapes for me to work with. The master to shape instance relationship that I take pains to preserve was gone, as were all of the shape data, hyperlinks and layers. In fact, the composition of shapes was completely destroyed which makes a Visio shape developer like myself weep with incredulity.
When it came to exporting the file back to Visio I was disappointed to find that my options were restricted to just the old XML format, vdx. The first thing to notice is that the file size bloated to 1.6 mb, which is approximately 2.5 times the size of the original.
The Lucidchart interface has obviously imitated Visio but does not have any of the smartness or refinement of the Visio desktop application. The graphics and text were roughly translated, but are missing the richness of the Visio originals, and they got even worse when saved back to Visio. I think the images below speak for themselves. Original Visio document first page First page in Lucidchart First page saved back to Visio Lucidchart seems to handle raster images satisfactorily, but has no clue on how to handle embedded Excel worksheets, which is one of the alternative methods for creating reports from Visio shape data. Original Visio document second page Second page in Lucidchart Second page saved back to Visio I am not going to criticize Lucid Software for trying, but Lucidcharts contains none of the features in Visio that would make it worth considering as an alternative, not even as a method of viewing anything but really simple Visio files on a Mac or on the web. What we really want is for Microsoft to provide a web edition of Visio that enables Visio files to viewed, and perhaps lightly edited, whilst maintaining the complete integrity of the Visio document. Miles Thomas Says: It would be interesting to have follow up articles on how well other tools that claim to be able to handle Visio really are.
A good list to investigate would be Gliffy (a competitor to Lucidchart–my experience is even poorer than Lucidchart but for quickly sketching up a structured diagram it’s quick and easy to use, and has UI features that have only been added to Visio only in 2010), Dia, OpenOffice (AOO-OOO & LO versions), and OmniGraffle–some of these are helpful to Mac/Linux, some are just cheap, and Gliffy is Web (available as Google Drive, Confluence, and also Office embeddable). Visio support in many of these is based on an open source reverse engineered parser for Visio called libvisio (which can parse some versions of.vsd,.vdx less supported and.vsdx on the to do list) I will leave aside the embarrassment that is Google Drawing, and lack of ability in Gmail and Google drive to preview Visio diagrams. Says: Hi and thanks!
You saved me some time, but here’s the deal, if I need a resource “now” and need to import Visio BPMN files so as not to have to redo them in a new app, is there anything “client-based” that will do the trick (because although many are waiting for a “web” app, some companies still would prefer not to place their data in the cloud, especially process files) and if the answer is “Sorry, there’s nothing.”, how about a good alternative (even if I have to redo my Visio work, boo hoo!)? After my extensive search, these are my favorites in functionality and simplicity (yED & Cubetto), and Omnigraffle & Concept Draw are too expensive for me. (Of course, with yEd & Cubetto I don’t think I’ll be able to convert my work back into Visio for my colleagues.) And lastly, has anyone even heard if MS might make a Visio for MAC? February 2015 M T W T F S S 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28. Categories. (4). (3).
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