Does anyone have a relationship diagram maker?

Wouldn't any flowchart program work for that? Or a vector graphics program, if you know how to use one?

Personally I'd just draw it on paper with colored pens or markers if it was a diagram for internal use, but if I wanted it to be pretty and official-looking I'd use Inkscape. If I had Visio and knew how to use it that would also be a good choice. I've also heard there's a particularly good flowchart software that's only for Mac. If you don't have or know how to use any of those, an easy-to-learn by feature-limited alternative would be one of the free mind-mapping softwares available online.

I'm going to get Visio from my school, but it doesn't have an option for two lines in between entities, as far as I know. If I can't find anything else, I plan to use Visio.

I used to do it on paper, but I want something that would be easily changeable. So I don't want to hand draw it or on a bitmap in Paint.

Visio doesn't let you add connectors from any corner of one object to any corner of another object, or that sort of thing? If not, then it's not very flexible.

Actually my best friend was just complaining about this sort of thing a week or two ago, he had to make some sort of organizational diagram for work and said that when he researched it he didn't find any free software which made diagrams which were pretty, easy to make, and easy to edit. I use Inkscape but it flunks the easy to make part - not really a problem for me since I already know how to use the software well and the diagrams I make are usually for some sort of tutorial or documentation which doesn't have to be changed much. So I make a rough sketch if I'm not quite sure what I want, then I make the diagram as a piece of vector art. But for someone who didn't know how to use a vector art program I bet it would be frustrating to try to use Inkscape to make flowcharts - it's not set up to do that, so it's not anywhere near as automated as one would hope. Flowchart making functionality is on the developers' "to do" list, but so are a thousand other things.

Not sure if this helps but Dia is a good alternative.

http://projects.gnome.org/dia/

Dia looks like something that fits it, at least that's how the screenshots are pointing to. I can't tell without using it though. Thanks for that.

Edit: This definitely works, it's too bad it's a bit slow. But it is the best I've seen. I might go back and forth with this and Visio.

[Edited by - pothb on December 24, 2010 4:54:27 AM]

Graphviz?

It's a text input system (so you can automate it), various solvers to lay the diagrams out, and the output can be images, pdfs or SVG which you can then edit in Inkscape.

Graphviz looks like it can do what I want but it's not simple enough for me it seems. So I don't think it'll help me in this regards.

Thanks anyway, though.

Visio have the option to draw relationship diagram. Check out the latest version of Visio i.e. Visio 2010. It’s a great diagramming software, which I use it for creating business process diagrams.
http://visiotoolbox.com/2010/mashups.aspx

OmniGraffle is one of the best peices of software along these lines that I have ever used. Unfortunately, it is Mac-only, and not terribly cheap - but definitely worth a look if those two points don't bother you.

"it's not simple enough for me"

Graphviz is relatively easy although I admit the documentation often makes it look like starting a fusion reactor. It's got a billion options you can apply if you want things complicated.

However, simple stuff is fairly easy. This is an input file which will generate your example diagram;



You run the thing by saying;



There's also -Tpng and -Tps to get PNG and postscript outputs.

Example input/output/makefile at; http://www.fysh.org/~katie/gv-docs/

Visio does everything. And plenty of stuff that you would never think of wanting. Trust me.

Quote:

Original post by InnocuousFox Visio does everything. And plenty of stuff that you would never think of wanting. Trust me.

Do you know how to make it connect 2 lines to one side of one box to one side of another box? And actually connect, not just to a point and it happens to be the same location of the box. I can do that, but moving the box afterwards messes up the lines.

And Katie, I meant by not simple is it doesn't seem to have a graphical user interface which is what I'm going for, since I really want to do it graphically, helps me. Doing it in code, is like doing it on paper, or so it seems to me.

EDIT: actually scratch that, rather than 2 lines, just any amount of lines would be better.

I suggest xmind.

http://www.xmind.net/

It's free. It's easy, and it can be used to track relationship between objects (Ctrl +d while in the program).

Maybe it's not exaclty what you've in mind, but it can be used to track relationship, with no problem.

Wow, Actually xminds seems best out of all the suggested, though it requires a bit of work to be how I want it, it does allow for multiple paths between objects.

EDIT: Well, what do you know...... I was wrong about visio.... I can add connection points to shapes. It doesn't do well with automatic adding of shapes but it's working... not the best it can be but it'll do.

[Edited by - pothb on January 4, 2011 11:47:07 AM]