OpenOffice is also a free Microsoft Office competitor. The tools in Draw let you make quick sketches or intricate workflows. Smart connectors help bring diagrams together faster, while dimension lines handle linear measurements as you work. Dia is an open-source program very similar to Microsoft Visio, with largely the same feature set.
You can use Dia to create UML diagrams, flowcharts, network processes and architectures, entity relationship diagrams, etc. The default file format for any file created with Dia is. If you connect Draw. Pencil Project is an open-source alternative to Microsoft Visio which is actively maintained by the development community. Their goal for Pencil Project is to make diagramming as easy as possible and usable for everyone from a newbie to an expert.
Visual Paradigm Online is one of the more well-rounded free alternatives to Microsoft Visio. While the free plan is limited, you do still access to a variety of templates in every category, free stock images, a selection of icons and charts, and export to PDF, JPG, and PNG. However, free is likely more than enough to serve as a decent Visio alternative.
Alternatively, you can use the free Microsoft Visio Viewer. Microsoft Visio is an advanced diagramming tool. That depends solely on the developer.
However, all the options on this list are actively supported by their developers. As you likely noticed, some of the alternatives do have premium plans available.
You only need to upgrade if you want to use premium features, which vary based on the tool itself. However, you can create complex diagrams for free with any of the above alternatives. Looking for other advanced software? See our list of the best Adobe Indesign alternatives. Or how about a list of the best alternatives to Google Maps?
Images: Creately Press Kit. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Crystal Crowder has spent over 15 years working in the tech industry, first as an IT technician and then as a writer. She works to help teach others how to get the most from their devices, systems, and apps. She stays on top of the latest trends and is always finding solutions to common tech problems.
You've decided to leave a comment. That's fantastic! That means you can access the editor and create and edit charts and diagrams from any browser or device. You can add up to 60 elements to each document.
Even on the free plan, you get access to over templates for your diagrams and flows. These templates allow you to create different diagram types for a variety of purposes, quickly. In addition, the free plan allows for basic collaboration capabilities, including the ability to follow a collaborator on a diagram, share a link to your diagram to anyone, invite collaborators via email, print and publish your diagrams, and a lot more.
In general, Lucidchart involves less of a learning curve than Visio, making it perfect for beginners as well as more advanced users. Related : Best Lucidchart Alternatives. Visual Paradigm Online is a suite of web-based apps you can use to create diagrams, charts, infographics, and more. Unlike Visio, it has an entirely free version.
The free version of the Visual Paradigm Online Diagram Creator is pretty good; it includes diagram templates, so you can create diagrams quickly for any purpose. In addition to exporting them in those formats, you can also embed your files in Microsoft documents or presentations. One of the things that makes Visual Paradigm Online such a great free alternative to Visio is that it provides a free online cloud repository for your work.
You can store the diagrams you or your team members create in the cloud. Diagrams stored in the cloud will update in real time and be synced across devices as changes are made. You can work with team members on a diagram, leave comments for team members to review, and revise the work your team members have done. The linear alignment tool will ensure all of your diagrams are in a straight line, and you can create diagrams easily using drag and drop.
In addition to diagrams, you can create charts, forms, posters, infographics , and a lot more for free. Not only does Visual Paradigm Online offer a free plan, but they make ALL of their features free for educators and educational institutions. You can join the Academic Partner Program to enjoy free access to the entire Visual Paradigm Online platform if you are using it for educational purposes. It has been around for a long time, and it has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
Despite being free, it has very advanced capabilities, so you can use it regardless of whether you are an individual, educator, businessperson, or anyone else who needs to create diagrams. One of the reasons yEd is such a great Visio alternative is that it has a huge selection of icons, elements, clip art, shapes, and other objects you can quickly add to diagrams or flowcharts.
Of course, you can also create and upload your own shapes and images. The drag and drop editor makes yEd incredibly easy to use. You can also import data from Excel and other sources to quickly turn that data into diagrams. There is a wide range of export format options available as well, including HTML, so you can easily export your diagrams for insertion into Microsoft documents, your own website, or other places.
It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The downside is that there is no online web editor, so you will need to download the software to your desktop to use it. There are dozens of shapes, arrows, call-outs, and more you can add to your drawing. You can also add a text box and customize the text by changing the font, size, alignment, etc. You can drag and drop shapes or resize them, and you can do the same for text boxes.
You can add text inside shapes, for example. It has the same general layout as Google Docs and includes similar editing options. You can also simply keep it in your online Google account. All of your drawings will automatically be saved to the cloud for you to access later, from any device, with your Google account.
You can make the document available offline as well. If you do that, you will be able to continue editing while offline, and changes made offline will be synced and saved once you get your internet connection back.
Google Drawings is also perfect for collaboration. Like all Google documents, you have a multitude of sharing options.
You can get a link to the document by clicking on the blue Share button in the top right corner of the screen. You can then choose to let anyone with the link access the document, or only people you specifically add. For instance, it has an online version as well as versions that work with Google Drive, Docs, Dropbox, and Chrome. Although Draw. This is to say that you can collaborate with anyone who has a Google account. Like Visio, yEd is a desktop platform that runs on Windows.
Although freely available, yEd boasts such a rich user interface that makes it both easy and fun to work with. Its rich library of diagramming features and elements makes it possible to execute almost any design you can think of.
With yEd Graph Editor, you can either create a design originally just as it is with Visio. But, unlike what you get with Visio, you can also use yEd to import ready-made graphic content and tweak it or use it for data or process analysis.
The fact that you can also import projects from Visio makes it easy for Visio users when they need to transition to the yEd platform. For instance, if a flowchart design gets too unwieldy due to a lot of data that you may have incorporated, you can use yEd to automatically navigate and control the branch directions. Compared with the Visio user interface, Dia Diagram Editor may appear to be a much more basic diagramming tool.
However, as far as a free replacement for Visio goes, Dia is among the best options to consider depending on your needs. As unattractive as the Dia UI may appear, many of its users appreciate a wide array of its applications as being adequate for a free tool. All these are available for absolutely free.
However, this is not without its opportunity costs. For instance, there is no support for Dia users, unlike Visio users who can reach out using many options such as email, phone, and chat and are supported with FAQs, a rich knowledge base, and many video tutorials.
Continuity is a downloadable desktop diagramming app. Of all the diagramming tools we sampled, none gives attention to model building as Continuity does. At the same time, none is able to produce the same quality output both on screen and on paper as this app does. Perhaps, the most visible advantage of Continuity over Visio is pricing.
So far, however, the collaborative outlook of Continuity is still limited compared to Visio. Unlike MS Visio, LibreOffice Draw is freely available and is backed by a community of developers that ensure it is regularly updated.
This is the sense in which it is categorized as open-source. However, LibreOffice Draw is not built for real-time collaboration between remote teams or team members. But an upside to this is that this software runs completely offline, which is an advantage in case your internet connection is poor or if you are in an offshore location without internet coverage. Another edge that LibreOffice Draw has over Visio is its versatility of deployment.
While we do not recommend this software for sophisticated or highly professional use cases, it is among the best available options for beginners and those whose jobs only require simple diagrams from time to time. Upon a visit to the ASCIIFlow platform , you are immediately presented with a simple interface that spots selection functionality, free form elements, shapes, arrows, lines, texts, and more that are readily available for your design needs.
The beauty of tech is an improvement. Then, competition tops the list of the factors that fuel that improvement. As a result, we had a really tough time trying to decide which of these diagramming options could be a worthy open-source replacement for age-old Visio to help those who are looking to spend less and still get design values that are enough to meet their needs or those who are looking to share ideas.
Quite honestly, even I never expected some of the items that made this list eventually. Creately, for example, may seem to have emerged out of the blue to top this list.
0コメント