Like many I.T. professionals, a regular part of many of my jobs has been to create, maintain, modify, etc network diagrams. I have always hated doing this...not, necessarily, because I hate maintaining documentation (although there is certainly some truth to that)...but primarily it has been because I absolutely HATE Visio. Visio is neither easy nor intuitive. Visio is also not the most stable of applications (although, what is on the
nasty?). A lot of that time was spent running Visio on an app server...as I typically do not run windows on my workstations.
In the open source world, we rely on programs such as
Dia and
Kivio. These are serviceable, but certainly not full-fledged replacements to Visio.
Recently, I was tasked with documenting a small network and went hunting for a decent OS X-native tool to do the job. I happened upon OmniGraffle Pro. Wow. Not only is it easy and intuitive...it's downright FUN to use! And, unlike the Visio diagrams I've done in the past, the final product looked great...without the hours of fine-tuning the layout and adjust colors I would spend in Visio (but, I fully admit this could certainly be due to my incompetence with Visio).
Regardless, this tool is immediately usable and the results are stunning.
With a full license you can import and export in the Visio format...which makes OmniGraffle a REAL world option.
Has anyone else used this program? And, if so, are you as impressed as I?
