Dia the open source Visio

Network Mapping, Open Source

If you need to create quick and easy diagrams but can’t justify a full priced tool like SmartDraw or Visio then you’re in luck. Dia is an open source diagramming tool that will make a welcome addition to your diagramming toolkit.

Dia comes with a wide range of symbols ready to drag ’n drop onto your drawings. The symbols snap together so that moving one of the symbols also moves all of the connectors, just like in Visio. Perfect for creating network, Entity Relationship (ER) and UML diagrams.

You can also export the diagrams into a rich array of file formats including many web friendly formats. Perfect for creating diagrams for your blog… 😉

Is Dia as good as Visio? No, it lacks the polish of Visio but it allows me to produce the diagrams I want in a reasonable amount of time…and that’s good enough for me.

Dia comes with a Windows installer, so it’s a breeze to give it a go.