Comments on David Alison's Blog: OmniGraffle makes it easy to leave Visio behind

Hi, I am having sort of the same experience, and s...

2008-08-14T08:57:00.000-04:00

Hi, I am having sort of the same experience, and similar feelings too.

Shading and first appearance is definitely better in OmniGraffle.
Also UML support (one of my primary interest) is better. In Visio I had to correct every diagram every time due to connector's default behaviour (and had no fancy shading).

I am anyway missing some cool stencil in the network and process area, which are not present in GraffleTopia, I can still import them from my Visio library, but. Also database modeling is not as good as it is in Visio. I guess I'll have to keep using both for a while...

I'm as big an OmniGraffle 5 Pro fan as the next, b...

2008-07-03T18:57:00.000-04:00

I'm as big an OmniGraffle 5 Pro fan as the next, but there is one common feature I need on a daily basis that I only get from Visio 2007 Pro: connecting shapes to records in a SQL db and having that shape altered based on the values of fields in a record. For flow charts there is no comparison but there will always be people who need those niche functions of Visio (unfortunately in my case I simply HAVE to use this feature).

I did a 25 minute screencast all about OmniGraffle...

2008-05-14T11:18:00.000-04:00

I did a 25 minute screencast all about OmniGraffle 5 last week!

You can download a HD version by subscribing to my iTunes free feed:

itpc://feeds.screencastsonline.com/scofree

or watch the lower resolution Flash version on the site:

http://www.screencastsonline.com/index_files/SCO0148-omnigraffle5.php

That slightly blurry text field will straighten up...

2008-05-06T22:22:00.000-04:00

That slightly blurry text field will straighten up if you get it out from sub-pixel positioning (open the Geometry inspector and remove anything after the decimal points in the X and Y fields). Sometimes our smart guides get too excited and put your images between pixels, thus preventing them from looking their best. Otherwise, I'm glad you like OmniGraffle and the UI stencil!

Thanks for the blog entries. I read your article f...

2008-05-06T17:24:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the blog entries. I read your article from a few days ago and kept shaking my head in agreement.

I was a diehard PC/Windows fan until last October when I got myself a sweet, new 17" MacBook Pro as my primary machine. It's clearly the best Windows laptop I've ever owned. I live and breathe in Visual Studio on a daily basis, so I'm still very much a Windows guy, but I would rather die than switch back to a PC laptop. I'm still amazed I can run 2 Windows virtual machines simultaneously with OS X with negligible hit to performance. I keep one VM (actually it's my Boot Camp partition) that runs my SQL Server database as well as my source control system. I then run individual VMs for each client. Once Fusion hits 2.0, I'll be really productive. The lack of solid multi-monitor support is definitely annoying me right now.

Anyways, I'm also searching for the same 2 replacement apps you are: Visio and OneNote. I'll give OmniGraffle a try. I don't use Visio all that much, so running in it Fusion works for me, but I'm always looking for ways to slowly switch to native Mac apps when it makes sense.

Keep up the great work on the blogs.

@Robert: Thanks man - I actually watched that vide...

2008-05-06T14:33:00.000-04:00

@Robert: Thanks man - I actually watched that video this morning. Some cool stuff coming. I also love that VMware will give it free to 1.0 users!

This is unrelated to this post, but since you're a...

2008-05-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

This is unrelated to this post, but since you're a VM user, I thought you might be interested in the fact that ver 2 beta is now out. Wired has a quick write-up and a nice (youtube) video.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/05/vmware-fusion-2.html

@Anon2: That's great because you're the kind of pe...

2008-05-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

@Anon2: That's great because you're the kind of person I'm hoping gets value from this blog. It's one of the reasons I continue to write down what I'm finding. Glad it's helping!

@Rob H: That's a really good point - hadn't thought about how people may use the plugins for Visio (I never used them - just worked with the stock version).

Like many applications that you can compare betwee...

2008-05-06T13:17:00.000-04:00

Like many applications that you can compare between Windows and OS X, how they stack up very much depends on your usage profile. I use Visio for diagramming networks, as well as automatically generating topology diagrams using various plug-ins. Unfortunately OmniGraffle was a non-starter in this respect, which is a shame given the huge price of Visio!

Rob.H

yo dave,just wanted to say that i appreciate this ...

2008-05-06T13:10:00.000-04:00

yo dave,

just wanted to say that i appreciate this blog as i am hoping to traverse a similar journey as you by picking up a refurb macbook pro (if i land some sidework) and switching to the mac environment. i too develop in visual studio, so running xp via fusion will be the way for me as well. i feel like i'm getting a head start in the transition by reading about your experiences. keep up the great work!

Glad to see another individual recovered from The ...

2008-05-06T11:55:00.000-04:00

Glad to see another individual recovered from The Collective. :)

I've been using OmniGraffle since v3 and it is the single best graphic application I've ever used. I'm in academics, and I've repeatedly seen fellow researchers who use Windows struggle with the complexity of Illustrator or Freehand to make figures for their research manuscripts and had to laugh...

I just fire up my Mac, pop open OmniGraffle, and in 10 - 20 min. whip out something that looks better and is clearer and easier to understand than what they've been working on all day... And for some strange reason, they always say "I wish I could do that on Windows", not realizing that they can do all they need on a Mac, and do it faster and easier.

I use OmniGraffle regularly for making figures and diagrams for research articles, and complicated images for use in Keynote for talks and lectures when what I need is beyond the built in tools in Keynote. I regularly get compliments from my colleagues on the design and appearance of the figures in my documents.

One caveat though, is that I do poster presentations at conferences from time to time, and have found that for poster size documents, OmniGraffle can really suffer a slow down. You need a top end processor and at the very least 2 GB of RAM to get OmniGraffle to work effectively with documents larger than about 11" x 17". For things like this, I've found that Visio is faster than OmniGraffle, but that is the only issue I've ever had with OmniGraffle.