Ive been running a home lab for awhile and its gotten pretty sophisticated over the years. About to destroy and rebuild. As such I want to document things and plan it all out nicely (I’ve been inspired by posts here!)
My problem is most likely my usage of a Mac these days. Visio doesnt work on the mac in a thick client, and the web client is pretty cool, but it’s quite confining in terms of shapes. Curious what you guys are using with the logo’ed graphics for every vendor/brand etc. Ideally something free, but not opposed to paying for a quality service/software.
Thanks in advance!
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I use the Draw.Io desktop app, not the web version for obvious reason.
Use to do it on Visio… But well Microsoft destroyed it.
MS Paint
Obsidian.
draw.io. you can save directly to google drive as well.
Lucidchart
draw.io. Not sure if there is a mac version (I’m running it on linux) but in any case there is a web version in which you can save (an load) your files locally.
I use Excalidraw or MermaidJS
We use Lucid Draw. Great because it is web based and can be used on any platform
I don’t know what it looks like until it’s done. 😆
Lucid Chart
I use plantUML. Its alright, gets you the first 95% of the way there very quickly but the last 5% of formatting is just impossible
Technically you can get a web browser version of vision but I’ve used lucidchart and draw.io before and they’re good. Lucid has good Visio compatibility, draw not so much
Mental map
For design documentation where detail is required - MS Word with some colour where required. Never saw the point in using visio or any other graphic packages.
A technical audience doesn’t need a graphical representation of an object looks like. If they don’t know what the object looks like they have problems. Virtual objects being represented by physical counterparts can be confusing and pointless.
Graphics are only useful for presentations and sales - it may save time in explaining what the objects are.
As a visual, technical person I see your point but disagree.
I don’t need (but like) the logos. I can understand the layout in hierarchical text.
But it absolutely helps me / is easier, to see the lines showing the interfaces connections.
I like D2 because it is declarative and I can keep the model in source control.
Yeah, this. I’m a big fan of the “diagrams as code” things like d2, mermaid, plantuml, nomnoml and all that. Obsidian has render plugins too so you can easily visualize things.