On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 09:17:44PM -0500, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote: > Much of the enterprise market seems wedded to Visio as their network > graphics tool, which locks them into Windows. Personally, I hate both > little pictures of equipment and Cisco hockey-puck icons; I much > prefer things like rectangles saying "7507 STL-1" or "M160 NYC-3".
Not sure how preferring things like rectangles stops you from using Visio, but *shrug* > Assuming you use *NIX platforms (including BSD under Mac OS X), what > are your preferred tools for network drawings, both for internal and > external use? I'd hate to be driven to Windows only because I need > Visio. If you're doing diagrams for internal use and know the chances of them being used with external parties is slim-to-none, go ahead, play with toys like dia. Omnigraffle looks hopeful, but haven't personally used. On the other hand, if you are doing professional business communications I'd seriously condsider getting vmware and Visio. I might be a little backward to many here, as I work for a consulting company and 95% of what we do is client-facing. Maybe, more accurately, if you never expect anybody other than you to edit your work, Visio's not a necessity. PDFs are almost 100% acceptable, with a few losers left who won't install a reader. Not trying to start a Visio religious war, just saying there's a reason enterprises use it. Random thought - think Visio's capabilities are about as underused as Excel's... John