OmniGraffle vs. other diagramming programs

On Feb 16, 2006, at 11:08 AM, Alexander Hoffman wrote:

> How does the $80 OmniGraffle compare to the $70 Inspiration?

I use the free version of OmniGraffle that used to come preinstalled
on Macs (which I'm assuming is not as fully featured as the latest
versions), and I own Inspiration - I like them both. I've used the
apps mostly for web design - topic mapping, functional specs, site
mapping. Here's my take on an OmniGraffle/Inspiration smackdown:

Inspiration is more of a mind mapping tool. Omnigraffle is stronger
on diagramming and has an excellent supply of diagramming palettes -
I esp. like Garrett Information Architecture.

Inspiration has an outline mode that you can compose in that will
switch effortlessly to mapping. At least at the time, in OmniGraffle,
you couldn't do this or you needed a companion application - I don't
remember which. I already had the full version of Inspiration, and
didn't feel the need to pay for OmniGraffle. It's nice to have this
in one place for one price.

Inspiration has a nice "Rapid Fire" feature that lets you type in
entries related to a concept, hit enter, and then it arranges/
rearranges them nicely around the concept (you can move them around
if you want to, of course). There are times when click & type
facilitates ideation.

In Inspiration, you can just click and drag connections between
layout elements; in OmniGraffle, you must select tools first.

Inspiration has a handy dandy auto arrange button (you've got to dig
through menus for OmniGraffle's auto layout), it arranges things more
neatly than Omnigraffle's auto layout.

Rather like the user developed add ons for Photoshop, Illustrator,
Dreamweaver, OmniGraffle has lots of cool free Applescripts and
tools: (org chart builder, origami diagrams, iTunes CD cover, etc.):
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/extras/

Marilyn

On 17/2/2006 5:08 AM, "Alexander Hoffman" <ahoffmanAleDev.com> spake thus:

> How does the $80 OmniGraffle compare to the $70 Inspiration?

I haven't used Inspiration, and only the non-Pro version of OmniGraffle. You
are correct that Visio interoperability is only available in the Pro
version. Grr :(

What I can say about OmniGraffle in general is that it's good, but quirky.
What I mean by that is that it doesn't quite seem to mesh with my brain
somehow --- I find several things that are somewhat non-intuitive that were
much easier to do in tools like... well, MacDraw, for example (I can't think
of examples offhand). It's a nicely done tool with some very nice features,
but it never seems to work just quite the way I expect it to. Maybe it's
just me :)

It also quirky in that has its own ideas on how certain things should be
done which I find annoying. For example, the way that it handles arrowheads
on curved connectors between objects to me just seems wrong. It gets too
carried away trying to make the arrowhead connect at a reasonable angle,
which means that the connector ends up with weird kinks in it.

It's very heavy on floating inspectors in the more recent versions, which
isn't much use on smaller screens.

Hope that helps.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

I concur fully with Marilyn's take on it, but want to add a few
observations too:

1) I have both Inspiration and OmniGraffle Pro, the first due to the
mind mapping features, the latter due to the Visio interoperability.
This works only with the Visio XML-format, so it is not a 100%
solution, but was certainly worth the upgrade price for me. YMMV.

2) I love the mind mapping tools of Inspiration and use them almost
every day. You just type in your ideas or your outline and Wam:
Apple-7:choose diagram style, Apple-E:scale for the window, and you
have a wonderful diagram. Much faster than what I have seen anyone
else can do, although I have been longing to dig deeper on that
subject for a long time (Nova Mind and Pyramid are two applications
that I would like to play with, and have not seen a similar fast
feature in Omnigraffle. MyMind is a Donationware that does a map, but
only from an outline, but even does OPML, so that could be an
inexpensive option for some too.).

3) Apart from the very handy RapidFire method, I really hate the non-
standard input methods of Inspiration. For instance, going from
anywhere on the last line in a text box to the end of the text, I
just push arrow-down in any other application. This brings you
exactly nowhere in Inspiration.

4) As Inspiration is focused totally on the educational market, there
is a very different focus on the pre-made graphics, so for nice-
looking stuff for work, I almost exclusively use Omnigraffle. I
believe that in terms of programming concepts, Inspiration is still
running OS9'ish and has almost not evolved over time, to me it is
still the same application it was 10 years ago, whereas OmniGraffle
takes full advantage of all the Cocoalicious things you get in Tiger.

Kind regards,

Kim Gammelgård


Den 17. feb 2006 kl. 7.24 skrev Marilyn Matty:

> On Feb 16, 2006, at 11:08 AM, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>
>> How does the $80 OmniGraffle compare to the $70 Inspiration?
>
> I use the free version of OmniGraffle that used to come preinstalled
> on Macs (which I'm assuming is not as fully featured as the latest
> versions), and I own Inspiration - I like them both. I've used the
> apps mostly for web design - topic mapping, functional specs, site
> mapping. Here's my take on an OmniGraffle/Inspiration smackdown:

On Feb 17, 2006, at 6:41 AM, Kim Gammelgård wrote:

> whereas OmniGraffle
> takes full advantage of all the Cocoalicious things you get in Tiger.

That's not surprising, given the NeXT software house origins of Omni
Group.

   --John

There is also a package called Concept Draw that plays in this same
area. More expensive and I don't have any experience with it but it's
out there.

<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20784>

I use OmniGraffle Pro on occasion (v3.2.4). Don't count on the Visio
compatibility. I have never been able to get drawings to transfer over
without significant rework. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I don't
think so. I agree with the comment on it being a bit quirky. It does
what I want it to do but it's just not as intuitive as I expect Mac
applications to be.

I use OG for some things, but have been a little more productive with a program called Pyramid.

I like the way Pyramid auto connects items and the way it links things.

http://www.mindcad.com/

RichL

I am surprised to hear people comment that OmniGraffle isn't
intuitive. I use it frequently and I find the program steadily
"teaches" me how to use it better. It offers numerous on-screen clues
to help line things up, it makes diagramming easy, and produces flow
charts that are so attractive that my co-workers like to hang them on
their walls.

Yes, there's a slight learning curve, but it absolutely blows away
the competition in ease of drawing, especially when you can template
what you're drawing a bit. (Only possible with the Professional
version.)

There's also OmniGraffle's vast Applescript library which can be used
to great effect.

I love the program (obviously), and even though I use a PC for most
of my duties at work, I exclusively diagram in OmniGraffle on my Mac
because comparatively, Visio is just a pain in my neck.

--Nik

OmniGraffle: spell checker; ConceptDraw: no spell checker (at least in 5.2.8)

OmniGraffle: stable as a rock; ConceptDraw: autoquitter

OmniGraffle: copy and paste into other programs like Word with faithful reproduction; ConceptDraw: you never knew what you would get.

I made the switch about 6 months ago and could not be happier. Although perhaps priced at a premium, every buck I spent on OmniGraffle was well spent. (OmniOutliner is also worth looking closely at.). Omni products are examples of software made for people not computers.

Greg Galloway

I agree with the comment on it [omnigraffle] being a bit quirky. It does what I want it to do but it's just not as intuitive as I expect Mac applications to be.

Most Visio users around here think Visio is a litte strange. So maybe it's the object/link paradigm that users don't quickly adapt to?

Mitch

On 21/2/2006 5:24 AM, "mitch.barker" <mitch.barkermt.com> spake thus:

> Most Visio users around here think Visio is a litte strange. So maybe it's the
> object/link paradigm that users don't quickly adapt to?

Nope, not for me. I don't know what it is, I think I just don't have quite
the same concept of diagramming as OmniGraffle's designers or something.
It's pretty good, but "off" just enough to throw me. That's then exacerbated
by my not using it all that regularly. I actually liked the earlier versions
better than the current one.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

"There's also OmniGraffle's vast Applescript library which can be used
to great effect."

I'm very aware that OG is scriptable. And I'm aware of a few examples. But I
am not aware of a "vast applescript library". Can you point out where to
find this?

On Feb 22, 2006, at 1:57 PM, Bruce Robertson wrote:

> "There's also OmniGraffle's vast Applescript library which can be used
> to great effect."
>
> I'm very aware that OG is scriptable. And I'm aware of a few
> examples. But I
> am not aware of a "vast applescript library". Can you point out
> where to
> find this?

Sorry, I mis-wrote. I should have said "Applescript DICTIONARY". My bad.

Library-wise, there's some pretty good scripts on Omni's site and
many others floating around on the MacScripters.net boards.

--Nik

Can anyone out there tell me if OmniGraffle Pro 4 really is import/export compatible with Visio? I'm trying to convince my boss to let me purchase OG Pro 4 for the 2 Mac users (I'm one) in the office and using Visio on Virtual PC really S*&TS me. I can only get OG Pro 4 if I can prove it really will origami with the Visio files we have.

Tess.

On Mar 17, 2006, at 10:11 AM, Tess wrote:

> Can anyone out there tell me if OmniGraffle Pro 4 really is import/
> export compatible with Visio? I'm trying to convince my boss to let
> me purchase OG Pro 4 for the 2 Mac users (I'm one) in the office
> and using Visio on Virtual PC really S*&TS me. I can only get OG
> Pro 4 if I can prove it really will origami with the Visio files we
> have.

Yes, it can import and export Visio XML files. These are not Viso's
native file format, but they work fine from both directions.

There are some problems with how lines anchor to objects and some
features which are available in one program but not the other. This
is fine if you're doing a fairly linear workflow, but if you're
actively collaborating on a file, it can quickly grow tiresome
dealing with it.

My own use of the import/export is mostly to share files rather than
to collaborate. I will get a Visio file then edit it or just view it
in OmniGraffle, or vise versa. The files rarely round-trip from Visio
to OmniGraffle and back to Visio again.

--Nik

On Mar 17, 2006, at 12:11 PM, Tess wrote:

> Can anyone out there tell me if OmniGraffle Pro 4 really is import/
> export compatible with Visio? I'm trying to convince my boss to let
> me purchase OG Pro 4 for the 2 Mac users (I'm one) in the office
> and using Visio on Virtual PC really S*&TS me. I can only get OG
> Pro 4 if I can prove it really will origami with the Visio files we
> have.

It doesn't claim full compatibility. It only works with Visio files
in .xml format. That is severely limiting, I find.

Regards,

Howard

The latest versions of OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional (version 4.1.1) have quite a few new features that compare favorably to Inspiration's mind mapping (Graffle now sports an outline view that automatically lays out the diagram as new entries are created).

Visio XML support has been improved over version 3's support (although there always remain discrepancies and edge cases that we always are tackling), the biggest problems we run into with respect to Visio are font sizing between platforms (basically a combination of default screen resolution and percentage-based leading versus point-based) and certain image types used commonly in Windows that Graffle Pro doesn't parse yet.

There are a bunch of other neat features as well, but I tread closely to astroturfing (Ken asked me to come in and comment on this thread). I'd encourage anyone interested to download OmniGraffle 4 and a 24-hour trial license from our website and give a test run.

Cheers,

Joel Page

Product Manager, OmniGraffle

The Omni Group

Tess,

i've been tossing Visio files from work back and forth between my Mac at home and my PC at work using OG Pro, and it has worked like a charm. Import/export has never glitched once. I use Visio's XML export -- it creates significantly larger files, but when I can fit 1GB on a stick the size of my little finger, well, that's not such a concern. ("Larger"? 5-6x larger going to .vdx from .vsd.)

I hope you win.

How do I open a Visio XML file in OG? I saved as a XML, but the doc is dimmed on a File OPen on the Mac side.

Thanks,

janet

On or about 6/19/06 9:31 AM, thus spake "JanetZoom" <janethandal.com>:

> How do I open a Visio XML file in OG?

OmniGraffle Pro is required for this. m.

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