Some excellent and clear technical documents, technical blogs, and work reports often require auxiliary images such as flowcharts, block diagrams, and mind maps.What tools do you usually use for drawing when writing papers, documents, blogs, or work reports?
I usually create block diagrams for my blogs and public account articles using PPT software, which is simple and quick. If you are not accustomed to using other drawing tools, PPT software is actually a good drawing option.
However, two weeks ago, while preparing a project work report document in an Ubuntu environment, drawing was not as convenient, so I had to look for some online drawing websites.
Below, I will introduce several commonly used and excellent drawing tools, including the one I am currently using and strongly recommend.
Introduction to Several Excellent Drawing Tools
1. Draw.io
Draw.io is an open-source flowchart drawing tool on GitHub with rich features. It supports flowcharts, UML diagrams, architecture diagrams, prototypes, and more. It supports synchronization with cloud storage services like GitHub, Google Drive, and OneDrive, and is completely free.
Online web version address:
https://www.draw.io
However, the online web version can be slow to access. If you find the web version inconvenient, you can also choose the offline version, as Draw.io provides a multi-platform offline desktop version for download.
To use the offline version, some configuration is required. Draw.io is the tool I am currently using and recommending in this article, so I will also explain how to configure and deploy the offline version of Draw.io.
2. ProcessOn
ProcessOn is an aggregation platform for online drawing tools, allowing users to create flowcharts, mind maps, UI prototypes, UML diagrams, network topology diagrams, organizational charts, and more, all from a browser, enabling creativity and work planning anytime, anywhere.
ProcessOn has certain limitations; the free version can only save 10 files online:
However, it can generally meet our daily usage needs. I used this tool to create several block diagrams for my last work report, and it was very convenient to export images after completion.
3. ProcessFlow
ProcessFlow is a secondary development based on Draw.io, similar to ProcessOn, which allows saving flowcharts to cloud servers, Baidu Cloud, Gitee, etc. It offers online preview and management, making it very convenient.
I discovered this tool by chance and haven’t used it specifically for drawing, but if you’re interested, you can try it out yourself.
4. Visio
Everyone should be familiar with Visio. It is a very useful diagramming software that helps us easily create various flowcharts, including common network diagrams, organizational charts, engineering designs, and other content using modern shapes and templates, greatly improving user work efficiency.
Using Visio to create diagrams for Word documents is a great choice, as you can directly insert Visio objects, making it look much clearer.
Deploying the Offline Version of Draw.io
First, download the offline version Draw.io draw.war package from the following address:
https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/releases
Note: If the download speed is too slow, you can also obtain it from this public account (reply with the keyword: Draw.io).
The WAR package needs to be deployed using Tomcat. Here, I am using Tomcat 8, which can be downloaded from:
http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-8/
Note: If the download speed is too slow, you can also obtain it from this public account (reply with the keyword: Draw.io).
Place the downloaded draw.war package in the Tomcat webapps directory:
Then double-click the startup.bat file in the apache-tomcat-8.5.64-windows-x64in directory to start Tomcat. At this point, there may be two scenarios:
- A black window flashes by.
- Successful startup.
The successful startup interface is as follows:
If it flashes by, it may be because your computer has not installed JDK or configured the relevant environment variables.
Install JDK, and you will see:
Then, add the JDK and Tomcat environment variables:
After configuring these, you can successfully start Tomcat.
Open a browser and visit the following address:
http://127.0.0.1:8080/draw
If the following interface appears:
It indicates that our offline version of Draw.io has been basically deployed. However, this is not the true offline version, as it will still access some external addresses.
To make it a true offline version, you need to add the following code to the urlParams function in the tomcat\webapps\draw directory’s index.html file:
result['offline'] = '1' // Default offline version
Thus, we have successfully deployed the offline version of Draw.io.
Source | Embedded Development Miscellany
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