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Nicolas Raoul
Asked: 2010-12-06 22:05:45 +0800 CST

Nice network diagram editor?

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Writing a commercial proposal, I want to create a nice graphic showing the clients the architecture I thought of for their IT network, with servers, network connections, firewall, load-balancing, etc.

For years I have been using dia, but I am tired of it because: the results are not satisfying, very few network elements are available, and each element's graphic representation is really ugly.

Question: How to create nice network diagrams?

If a better set of elements was available for dia, that would be a solution.

networking software-recommendation diagram

14 Answers

  1. Try these LibreOffice/OpenOffice galleries with Draw: http://www.vrt.com.au/downloads/vrt-network-equipment

    CC licensed, also available in Fedora repos and the libreoffice extensions site.

    UPDATE: v1.1 release added new darker variants (like VMware's shapes), and a set logical network symbols added - now near 200 symbols in 5 gallery themes.

    sample of shapes in gallery

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  2. Best Answer

    Inkscape is all you need. For additional clip art graphics ('elements'), use openclipart.org. OpenClipart is actually built into Inkscape these days. There's really no need to resort to non-free apps.

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  3. I decided to move my diagrams to the cloud after I saw Cacoo. It's a very intuitive tool, having a lot of diagram and icons choices and mostly it has options for online collaboration. The only downside is that is a proprietary software :/

    Here is my sampleDiagram

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  4. By looking in the Dia official FAQ, I discovered there is a way to extend Dia and its elements set.

    Extending Dia

    Q: How do I add new shapes/sheets? A: An explanation is given in doc/custom-shapes in the source distribution on how the shape format works. However, Dia now also has the capability of exporting a diagram as a shape. Each collection of shapes (called a sheet) should be kept together in a subdirectory of ~/.dia/shapes, e.g, ~/.dia/shapes/Engines. To make a shape, first design it in Dia. Then export it into your subdirectory. Two files will be generated, a .shape file and a .png file (the icon).

    From version 0.90 and up, Dia features a Sheets and Objects editor which will allow you to load the shape into a sheet. It will also update Dia's loaded objects on the fly.

    If you still want to do things by hand, update the corresponding sheet file in ~/.dia/sheets, in this case called Engines.sheet. Example contents of a sheet file is:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!-- -*- xml -*- -->

<sheet xmlns="http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/dia-sheet-ns">
  <name>Engines</name>
  <description>Mechanical Engines</description>
  <contents>
    <object name="Engines - Gas">
      <description>A gas engine</description>
    </object>
  </contents>
</sheet>

    Each new object should be added to the sheet by adding an object section. Next time you restart Dia, the new objects should show up in the list of sheets.

    So I suggest you to add your own shapes to Dia and live happily:)

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  5. yED Graph Editor is a desktop application that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality diagrams. It can also be used to generate network diagrams. Here is a sample diagram that was created using this software.

    Network Diagram

    Source for the above image: yED image gallery

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  6. I still find dia to be a great option, and I'm curious to know why you find that the network diagrams don't look adequate.

    In my experience, there are a large number of traditional network diagram shapes such as the conceptual drawings for routers, switches, etc., as they are used on documentation (like what comes from Cisco)... and it looks just the same. Please let us know what you find is missing in Dia, so that someone can go ahead and create the shapes we may all find really useful :)

    There are, admittedly, a number of issues with connecting things and other aspects of using dia that are different if you come from a Microsoft Visio background, but to me, it still seems to work great. When I researched it, it was still the best diagram editor around for this type of work.

    As far as I know, all the elements I described there are available in the stock dia. You will want to look for the shape sheets with names starting with "Cisco".

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  7. I recently found a Dia package called gnomeDIAicons and although not a large set of icons they do look good.

    Here's an example I just put together:

    enter image description here

    To install, download the archive and in the terminal:

    cd /usr/share/dia/
sudo tar xf ~/Downloads/rib-network-v0.1.tar.gz

    In case you are using Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 17.10 or 18.04, the package dia-rib-network is available (see here). You can install it with:

    sudo apt install dia-rib-network

    Then open Dia and choose the RIB-Network sheet.

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  8. Another tool to create nice network diagrams in real 3D is MaSSHandra.

    It has all Cisco symbols as a external download and includes autodiscovery and access features inside the diagrams. It's free and you can see how it works before install it from here.

    screenshoot

    MaSSHandra web site

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  9. An alternative to Cacoo might also be Gliffy, although I'm not certain what their shape/stencil support is like though. Worth a look nonetheless.

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  10. Though may seem like an odd choice, I find inkscape to be a great tool for diagramming, particularly network diagramming. Its output is svg, making it very portable and attractively rendered. And underneath, there is xml -- which you can manipulate programmatically (e.g., parse, search, edit, or even tie into other data sources for descriptions or other variable attributes). And it is Open Source.

    By the way, here are the Cisco stencils, for those who might be interested. Formats include svg, jpg, bmp, tif, eps, wmf.

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