Microsoft Visio is very competitive in terms of its functionality. However, when considering its price, Visio is a bit expensive. So, here comes the question:’Is there any other Visio alternatives with even more built-in symbols?” Today, let’s find out Visio internet stencil alternatives right now!
Visio Internet Stencil Alternatives for Active Directory and Objects
This symbols covering domain, computer, user, group, container, contact, site, site link, server, IP subnet and many more. For example, the domain element shows a distinct subset of the Internet, which are normally managed by organizations or individuals. Some other symbols such as the directory connectors show features to integrate with an active directory.
As we all know that Microsoft Visio is offline based so you need to download and install it on your device. However, is there any Visio alternative online tools for an ever quicker start for your project? Don’t be panic, in today’s guide we will show you a list of these top tools!
How We Pick up these Visio Alternative Online Tools?
There are so many aspects and factors that we can refer to when we are talking about diagramming tools, but in this article here, we will mainly focus on the following important points:
- Diagramming Categories – what specific types of diagrams can the tool draw? For business? or for networking diagrams?
- Integration Options – which platforms can the tool be connected to?
- User Interface Design – whether the user interface/drawing board is clear and innovative?
- Collaborations – whether the tool is easy for remote team projects etc.?
- Unique Feature Compared to other Alternatives – Is there any more specific functions that the tool can offer?
Gliffy
The Visio alternative online here is based on a drag-and-drop drawing board, and it is mainly for creating software engineering diagrams, floor plans, wireframes, and business diagrams. The collaboration and integration features are also great especially for diagramming beginners. For example, you can add, view, edit and send comments on your file and send it to your teammates. Alternatively, you can connect Gliffy directly to Trello, Basecamp, Jira, and Confluence, etc.
As the increasing demand for Visio alternatives on different operating systems including Windows, Mac, and Linux, you may be wondering how to open and edit Vsdx, or Vsd file formats with a Visio alternative. Today, let’s easily see the answer together!
What are Vsdx and Vsd File Formats?
The Vsdx file format is introduced by Microsoft to replace the older version Vsd and the Visio XML drawing format Vdx. VSDX files are used for saving flowcharts, process diagrams, organizational charts, and so on. VSD files are used for storing connection information for imported data sources. Some other key Visio file formats including Vsdm for Visio macro-enabled drawing; Vssm for Visio macro-enabled stencils; Vstx for Visio templates and so on.
How to Open and Edit Vsdx, Vsd Files with a Visio Alternative?
It’s more than easy to do so by using an all-in-one multi-platform based on a free download diagramming software.
Open Vsdx and Vsd Files
You can directly drag and drop your Visio files to the drawing board to open it. Alternatively, you can go to File>Import>Import Visio File as shown below:
Have you ever tried Visio alternatives before? If the answer is a “No”, why not read to the article here and choose your best Visio alternative? Today, we will go through the top 5 Visio 2013 alternatives for diagramming and graphic design with their pros, cons and key features.
Why Do We need to Select Visio 2013 Alternatives?
The majority of marketing or design managers know that project failure may due to a wide range of problems including poor design quality, few integration options; very limited design resources, etc. In this case, an easy and professional diagramming software such as Microsoft Visio 2013 would help you a lot in many fields: flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, Gantt charts, engineering diagrams and more.
However, Microsoft Visio has two main disadvantages when comparing to its alternatives:
- It is costly to middle or small businesses (the pro version will cost you over $500 for just one copy).
- The advanced functions in Visio seem only suitable for large-scale firms. Therefore, for basic or general designs, small businesses should better choose Visio alternatives to fit their needs.
What Kind of Criteria Do We Use?
To be covered as one of the Visio 2013 alternatives in this article, the tool had to meet these requirements:
- Overall easy-to-use: the diagramming software has clear design or tutorials for first-time users;
- Affordable: the software should have a lower price (monthly or annually) than Visio 2013;
- Popularity: the software has at least 20 customer reviews on the leading software review platforms (e.g. Capterra or G2Crowd);
Feel free to read on to explore more about all these top Visio 2013 alternatives for your projects.
Microsoft Visio is a good diagramming tool, but its $589.99 is too high for many of the single users. You may also have heard about some quite good closed source Visio alternatives like Edraw Max or Lucidchart, but how about the choices for open sourced ones? In today’s article, we will check the top 5 open source Visio alternatives.
Inkscape
The software is one of the vector-based open source Visio alternatives with 2D drawing, object creation, and manipulation, data import or export, rendering and so on. It is free to download from its official website.
Pros
- Has a well-structured menu system for you to edit every single element on the same layer of your work;
- It can be operated on many operating systems including Windows and Ubuntu;
Cons
- So far, not too much exporting options available (only PNG is available)
- Doesn’t support 3D diagramming;