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Discussion on: What's the best software for creating flowcharts and other visuals to document application logic?

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crescojeff profile image
Jeff Creswell • Edited

Free/open-source
For a text->graphics approach, GraphViz and PlantUML are neat.
StarUML v1 is useful if you don't mind missing the snazzier features of commercial modeling programs

Free for non-commercial use
Astah Community Edition slightly more complex and featureful than StarUML above.

Free Trial
go.js produces some really nice interactive graphs. Some of its example programs are already miniature UML tools, and theoretically you could us it to write the best tool for your use-case

Commercial
Microsoft Visio is pretty much the enterprise standard
LucidChart comprehensive suite of cloud-based UML tools.
StarUML v2 slightly more mature-looking upgrade to the open-source version above

Relevant Stackoverflow questions
Linux UML tools
General UML tools

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Ben Halpern

Wow, great list. For commercial purposes (so would be willing to pay a reasonable amount) which would you recommend for someone who prefers an intuitive UX over fully-featured-but-steep-learning-curve-and-kind-of-crazy, if you know what I mean?

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Marek Dabek

Unfortunately, Visio (at least up to 2013) is indeed enterprise standard, but it has some annoying features and bugs.
One of the most irritating thing is brainless rearranging of diagram when adding new element. Sometimes it cannot be reverted. I've seen this not getting fixed for the past 10 years. Other one is that in 2013, UML took a step back and it is less intuitive.

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Roland 🐺

I personally like LucidChart a lot. Very versatile, great capabilities & templates and they keep improving it.

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Walker Harrison

now this is a thorough answer! Currently only thinking about a handful of diagrams, so would probably stay with the free tier. Coincidentally, another dev user posted about PlantUML just yesterday. I'll give that and GraphViz a shot and let you know how it goes. Thanks!