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