Software for Making Company Diagrams?

gaudenz asks: "We have a network with Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows and need a software to paint simple diagrams, such as used in deployment. The actual requirements are simple: The tool must export to postscript, support fonts, boxes with multiple lines of text, and connections between these boxes. We found Visio with VMWare to be the best solution, JGraphpad 5 looks promising, too. Since diagrams are a common thing in development companies I was hoping others have made a comparison, too, and may come up with some other ideas to solve this problem."

Comments

Closest to Visio at the moment..

[rusty0101]

under Linux is Dia.

I am not claiming it is a great app. I happen to think it needs a lot of work. However for a quick drawing, to do flow chart type work, you should find it viable.

Good luck.

-Rusty

Re: company diagrams

[gnu-generation-one]

"The tool must export to postscript, support fonts, boxes with multiple lines of text, and connections between these boxes."

OpenOffice Draw is so perfect for this job that it's not even an interesting question. Imagine something like Visio, but better, Free, and native to linux. Doesn't crash like Dia, easier to use, more versatile, and handles all the "linked boxes with translucent backgrounds and text some of which is in different colours or styles" that you'll ever need.

I assume that "print to file" generates some sort of postscript output, but it certainly supports saving as PDF, in addition to bitmap output options. You do know that ImageMagick makes it trivial to convert between images, PS, and PDF from the command-line?

OpenOffice.org Draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Is rather more powerful than Micrsoft picture, it's closer to visio (though lacks the extensive library of ready-made shapes).

It's wacky OpenGL 3D-effect objects are a big hit with the PHBs, too.

ConceptDraw

[tin foil hat dude]

ConceptDraw is an Awesome piece of software that I have used for flow charts, cubicle diagrams and some huge charts that were 14 ft. x 6 ft. and had about 80,000 data points.