Something like Photoshop Smart Objects

[acecase]

First, I apologize for the lack of a descriptive subject, but I don't know what the correct terminology is if the feature exists. Also, if there is already an answer on the forum that I couldn't find because I don't know what to search for.

What I'm looking for is a way to draw diagrams in pieces that I can then use in other diagrams that will be updated when I make changes to the master. Since that was no doubt hard to make sense of, let me give an example.

I'm using Visio for Network Diagrams. I tend to include our network core in many other drawings. I would like to be able to draw the network core one time, include that in other drawings, and then, more importantly, have any changes I make to the core drawing reflected in any other drawings that it is used in.

Photoshop has a feature called Smart Objects that acts like this and I considered using Photoshop for my documentation, but Visio is the standard for these things.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, or even tell me what to search for, I would appreciate it.

[vojo]

visio works the other way around:  Once you pull shape from a stencil, its copied to document stencil, the master in the stencil can be changed but wont affect the dropped shape.  If you want to update in drawing (say you have shape 20 instances), go to document stencil and make the change there.   Also, any change in document stencil does NOT cause an update of the master shape stencil.

[acecase]

Thank you for the answer. It isn't what I wanted to hear, but the truth is the next best thing.

I'm amazed that there is no better option for network documentation. I played with the idea of keeping a data structure that describes my devices and their connections, and then generating graphs with graphviz, and I had some success, but the results weren't always the most readable.

I tinkered even more briefly with building my own graph generator, and that experience is why I will not say anything bad about graphviz. What they have developed is remarkable, even if the results for my specific use-case aren't exactly what I want.

[Yacine]

There are actually at least 2 ways to realize this smartness.

The simpliest is to insert the drawing as linked OLE object. Downside: it's only an OLE object, no Visio editing, inspection, etc.

A more complex way is to have group shape which copies by means of VBA code the desired drawing in itself and refreshes itself on request. The data about which drawing to pull is simply stored in a custom data field.

[vojo]

FYI...most of the alternatives to visio are just static drawing tools...or...more like a cad program mechanical designs

- Draw.IO is static (cant believe a guy got a Ph.D. off of that)
- Inkscape is static (but you can write python scripts to alter shapes)
- DIA is just plain cheesy, Sketchup is a poor mans CAD and seems resigned to drawing furniture
- Openoffice/libreoffice visio like tool seems difficult to use (I could never duplicate recipe results), etc.
- all the "free" CAD tools seem halfway done
- My daughter does a lot with adobe cloud (some impressive results) but not an option for me

Either way, I think you will lose some functionality you want.

I don't know about Edraw...but I suspect they are focused on emulating visio although implementations are different.

If you find something better, maybe share it with all.

[Bork]

For a small network, you could consider placing all the network drawings into one Visio file.  Then you could draw the network core on a background page, which would be edited as needed.  Then on foreground network pages where you need to see the network core, just add the core network background page.  You could have different background pages to represent they different diagram pieces you need.