Alternatives (preferably FREE) for VISIO

[acidity]

Hello

As part of my database class at the university we have to make lot of ER diagrams. What do you suggest the best tool for making ER diagrams over Mac?

Ritesh

 

[mduser63]

Check out OmniGraffle. It's not free, but it's very good (IMO, better than Visio).

 

[bhanks]

Anyone have any other ideas about this?

A great visio alternative is Lucidchart.

 

[TomCat]

Check out OmniGraffle. It's not free, but it's very good (IMO, better than Visio).

Agreed. I have been using it for 5 years. You will never go back to Visio, which blows. The only negative for Omnigraffle is that you can't create your own shapes or distort shapes, although there are beaucoup premade stencils for just about everything. You can make custom shapes by combining those available, however. That, and I wish there were finer control over multicolor shading.

 

[DoctorCrap]

Check out OmniGraffle. It's not free, but it's very good (IMO, better than Visio).

OmniGraffle is cool but it doesn't allow you to free-form your shapes but is useful is many ways. I used it before but I had no real intentions of using it anymore. I had OmniGraffle Pro though...

 

[bhanks]

Agreed. I have been using it for 5 years. You will never go back to Visio, which blows. The only negative for Omnigraffle is that you can't create your own shapes or distort shapes, although there are beaucoup premade stencils for just about everything. You can make custom shapes by combining those available, however. That, and I wish there were finer control over multicolor shading.

Ok so obviously I am a little biased since I am a vendor but Lucidchart does support creating custom shape libraries and if you are on a team you can share that library with others. Also we will be supporting Visio stencils in the next couple weeks.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Ok so obviously I am a little biased since I am a vendor but Lucidchart does support creating custom shape libraries and if you are on a team you can share that library with others. Also we will be supporting Visio stencils in the next couple weeks.

Looks good, but unfortunately I cannot use this since our company requires stand alone applications, not online solutions.

 

[James_C]

Another vote for OmniGraffle - there is also an iPad version that is excellent as well, and cheaper than the Mac version. It will also read Viso files.