Microsoft Visio equivalent ?
 

Hello guys ?

I would like to know if there is any Microsoft Visio equivalent software out there for linux ?
ones that will even open microsofts *.vsd files


Thanks guys

Dia: http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

EDIT: don't know if it accepts MS formats...haven't used it in a while.

I haven't used Dia, so I have no opinion there.

I have used Kivio, though, and it find it pretty good. Not quite up to Visio but pretty good nonetheless.

There are two sites - the KOffice one (GPL), which is here: http://www.koffice.org/kivio/screenshots.php

There is also a non GPL commercial version - http://www.thekompany.com/projects/kivio/

I am not aware of any application that can import the current .vsd file formats. As usual, MS has them proprietary and no one has taken the time to reengineer.

As it is, in order to stay compatible for when I downgrade to XP at work, I have a version of Visio 2002 running under CX Office.

HTH!

I hear that the OpenOffice drawing program does the same thing as Visio... whether it's as feature rich, I couldn't tell. I've only used visio for a project in highschool, and never touched ooo's drawing app.

I haven't tried OOo for drawing yet. I noticed, also, that I have Karbon14 as well, which seems to do some vector drawing.

I did do a flowchart in KVivio for a bit in February. I ended up reverting over to Visio, I think, because I just couldn't do things in KVivio I wanted in Visio:

http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/AO...iesProcess.flw

Here's a PDF of the same thing:

http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/AO...iesProcess.pdf

This was interesting. It turns out there's no way to export an image of the drawing and paste it in - for example - open office. I do a lot of this kind of stuff at work, where I do a flowchart/screen mockup/data layout and export it to a jpeg or whatever. I then import that to a document for requirements or documentation.


http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/infrastructure.jpg

That was done in Visio XP and exported out to .jpeg format. I apparently can't do that in KVivio.

You can use imagemagick to convert back and forth between pdf and jpg. I don't know if you have direct support for saving as pdf in kvivio (I don't use it), but you can certainly print to postscript and convert it from there.

convert diagram.pdf diagram.jpg

I'm using a new diagramming tool called Edraw Max. To me it is a good Visio alternative because the user interface is very similar to Visio; and Edraw Max is multi-platform based so it can be used on Linux. Also, I have found that Edraw Max has more built-in diagramming elements, symbols, and templates than Visio.

I just tried the latest version Edraw Max 9.4, and now it allows me to open and edit vsd and vsdx files! Great!

ps: it seems that there is still a very few diagramming tools that can work on Linux OS....

I have used Dia and quite liked it once I got the hang of it. I haven't used it for a while now, as I no longer have a compelling need to create flowcharts.

The de facto leader or my LUG speaks very highly of LibreOffice Draw. I just took a look at Draw and note that it does have the tools for doing flowcharts.

Kivio is now known as Calligra Flow [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligra_Flow] and here's it's home page[https://www.calligra.org/flow/.

I would advise looking at draw.io. It is a free online tool. As others noted, LibreOffice Draw is another good option. If I am honest, I found both tools a bit frustrating to use, but that is probably because of my lack of experience with diagramming tools in general.