Nirmalya’s Blog

Came across DIA, whilst searching for alternatives to Visio. DIA is pretty much like ‘Visio’, except that it is free! It too can be used to draw E-R diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. To find out how good or bad it is, I tried out this simple use case diagram (left).

[Click on images to enlarge]

As you can see, it produces pretty clean images. Something not always possible when using Visio (I have a habit of exporting all use case diagrams as PNG image files, before inserting them into the use case documents – helps keep the file size small).

I had been looking around for alternatives to Visio for the past week.

Amongst the free ones, there were Violet and ArgoUML. But I wasn’t too satisfied with the quality of the PNG images they generated. (Violet’s had a shadow under the use cases and the text couldn’t be centred, which DIA allows.) ArgoUML kept hanging on me. I undertstand that its a free version to a paid one, but I wasn’t at all impressed.

Amongst the commercial ones, there was SmartDraw, starting from US$148 for its most basic version, which was good enough for most software diagrams, flowcharts & gantt charts. I am currently evaluating their 30-day trial version.

Another commercial UML tool that I had look at, was MagicDraw. Looking at the list of its features, MagicDraw’s Standard Edition suits most of my (current) needs. Costs around US$500 (US$799 for a floating licence). Even more attractive is their Professional Edition, which allows code generation and reverse engineering functionality, for Java, C++ and C#. But that costs approx. US$1500.

Had I not found DIA, I’d probably have recommended MagicDraw or Smartdraw, depending on what the needs and budget was like.

Overall, I’d rate DIA a 7.0 (on a scale of 1 to 10). It suits my requirements to quite an extent, though drawing sequence diagrams isn’t as good as other tools.

Installation is a breeze. You can download Dia for Windows, from here.
It is very easy to use and scores pretty well where others failed (i.e. easy manipulation of the use cases).
DIA can export as PNG, EPS, JPG/JPEG, SVG (amongst several other formats)

In addition to drawing E-R diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, etc., the DIA homepage suggests that it is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files.