Visio equivalent for free

It should be for alt.comp.freeware.

Karthik Balaguru

Lists 5 alternatives to Visio.

I use Open Office Draw (on Linux and Windoze) for the simple stuff and an ancient copy of Visio 2000 Pro for the messy stuff where I have to use customers Visio stencils.

Hey Jeff, Thx for your inputs, it is very helpful !

It seems Open Office Draw is also a good alternative.

In the same link that was conveyed by you, i found a list of top 10 Commercial and top 10 Open Source alternatives/equivalents to Visio.

It seems that 'Dia' has been designed very much like commercial Visio in Open Source category and has been rated '1'.

Anyhow, i will check both .

Karthik Balaguru

I had some problems with Dia. While designed to work like Visio, it will not import or use Visio files, stencils, and shapes. That's the key problem with using clones and why I use Visio 2000 Pro. The drawings of equipment and boxes created by my customers are a requirement for my work. See:

bottom section, for hints of problems to come if you need compatibility.

i cannot comment on the equivalents - but it is worth noting that every time there is anew version of visio from microsoft, the .vsd etc file formats change.

so - visio version x is not compatible with version x+1, unless x+1 is set to save in an old format.

and you cannot set the current one at work to save to the oldest one we have (2 versions back).

Okay, i checked the bottom section. It seems that with new XSLT plug-in, if we have a proper XSLT document to be able to translate, then visio file can be opened. It seems that some work is in progress !! But the link

not working !! Any alternate link to know the status of it ?

Okay, I checked with OpenOffice Draw -

So, visio files(.vsd files) cannot be opened using OpenOffice Draw and it seems that no much work has been done by Draw on that track.

In Brief, Some work is going on in Dia to open visio file . No work in progress in Openoffice Draw to open visio file.

It seems tha the visio file(.vsd format) can be opened only in visio as of now . :-(

Thx in advans, Karthik Balaguru