Visio 2019 Professional for $29 from KeyMart

[Yacine]

ok....IMHO

Inkscape pros:
- rich static drawing tools
- python macros....although about the most rube Goldberg approach to macros I can think of...
          - aside from canned macros, unusable...got to burn ~50 lines of Python just to get in position for actual fcn you want

inkscape cons:
- everything is very manual (drawing very manual, shading very manual)
- no real concept of smart shapes, data icons/symbols, etc...no shape properties to control shape behavior per given instance
- no application specific templates and such....to be productive and handle the minutia

So if you want to draw a picture manually - a bowl of fruit, Inkscape is great.   Its just not really focused on productivity.

The cons Vojo names are not specific to Inkscape, but rather to any other non-Visio solution.

[Jennifer]

The cons Vojo names are not specific to Inkscape, but rather to any other non-Visio solution.

Thanks

[vojo]

I don't know for sure....but I think edraw and conceptdraw are pretty similar to Visio.

[Nikolay]

IMHO, Inkscape is more of a design tool. Means, people do art with it (logo design, illustrations, etc)
Those who do business diagramming (like building plans or org charts) were never meant to be target audience of Inkscape, as far as  I know.

I think Lucidcharts could be much closer alternative to Visio than Inkscape (from online alternatives)
Similarly to Visio, there you have sets of pre-built blocks (shapes) that you could use to compose the diagram.

But the issue is, many people have lots of diagrams already created in Visio that cannot be imported without loss. Lucidcharts can import Visio diagrams, but that import is not purely 1:1
Also, there are lots of 3rd party components for Visio that cannot be found for other applications (like devices, or engineering stuff like pipes etc).

[Jennifer]

Thanks for all tne suggestions

[Bork]

    I'm usually one version behind on Visio because I buy used copies on ebay. Can usually find one for less than $100 if you shop around after a new version comes out.  I make sure they are legal copies and have a disk included. Been lucky so far. Only been burned once on used software, on an Adobe product (counterfeit) and ebay reimbursed me.

     Been using Visio since it first came, so I guess I like it.  I do use use Inkscape to supplement Visio since it has the ability to digitize pictures and its letters are in vector format vice True Type.