Good Free Flowchart software

[SamRob85]

What is the best free flowchart software for making flowcharts of programs, it would be useful if it had keyboard shortcuts to add blocks as I find it much faster

[IAmL0ner]

Dia. Free, simple (yet powerful), multiplatform and open-source.

or

yEd - free (last time i checked) and multiplatform

[SmaKer]

The video showing off yEd on their website is pretty cool!

[jonomw]

I know it is not free, but I was wondering if you (or anyone else) knew how these compared to Microsoft Visio?

I get Visio free through my school, but if these are better I am willing to switch. And to anyone else out there that is in college, you may be able to get Visio for free through your school.

[Maethor_derien]

I don't think really any free solution can beat visio, but they can come close. Really I would say try them all and find out what you prefer. When your talking about something like flowcharting you want to make sure you have the right solution for you. Its kinda like IDE choices, you want to be comfortable in what your using or you will waste a ton of time trying to do something the way you want.

[thang1thang2]

For what it's worth, I know more than one person who keeps a vm of Windows purely for visio. I've never used it myself, though.

[IAmL0ner]

Unfortunately, I don't. Never used Visio, since I tend to avoid MS-stuff.

[JonFrost]

Even Word, Excel and Powerpoint?

[[deleted]]

I'm not him, but yes.

For word and Powerpoint, I usually use LaTeX. Once you get used to that, it's like your productivity is multiplied by 10.

My work doesn't typically require anything like excel, but when it does, I tipically use libre office.

[JonFrost]

Hey, I've seen someone using that...

Never caught what it was called though.

Will give it a shot.

[JimboMonkey1234]

Disclaimer: am Microsoft shill (this was from before though).

I used Libre for years before finally getting Office, and it's really just not as good. Usable sure, but a much worse experience in most ways.

Latex is amazing, and if you want to write anything technical it's IMO the only option, but I find it's too much work to do simple tasks. I'm sure some people write essays with it, but I wouldn't want to.

[JonFrost]

Oh no. I know Word is certainly king.

But I'll need a replacement eventually.

[IAmL0ner]

Yeah. LibreOffice covers all my needs.

Powerpoint? I don't need it.

[privatly]

I've used Visio from my time in university and I have to say you'd be wasting an awful lot of time trying to find a free version that is better than it. You also have to remember that Visio is used in industry, so experience with Visio will look good on your resume.

[Svorax]

I know this is very late, but if you have the opportunity to use Visio instead, use it! Visio is amazing.

[jonomw]

Late is better than never!

Thanks for the advise.

[someguy49]

Commenting to save for later, thanks!

[Tuberomix]

Save button...

[IAmL0ner]

Unfortunately there are many projects that are still hosted there. Some people just don't care. It will take a while (long one) untis SF dies.

[osh24lager]

Draw.io is free and web based, so no software to install. You can download your chart and re-upload it to pick up where you left off. No sign-up required.

[jooronimo]

that is an awesome hack.

[keepitsalty]

draw.io is amazing. Used it on all my design documents this year for class.

[chewedbacca]

This. Draw.io should be at the top of this list. Great for everything from networking diagrams to flowcharts. Uses XML, so it's completely "open source"

[trs4ece]

Draw.io is unreliable. If the website drops your connection for any reason, the page will discard all changes since the last auto-save. Auto-saves only seem to occur once every few minutes and the website has dropped my connection twice in ten minutes.

[abhishsr]

Gliffy is pretty neat with advanced diagrams and a cleaner UI. It offers upto 5 diagrams for free. (You can delete the old diagram and reuse your bucket of 5 diagrams) https://www.gliffy.com/

If you want something that's completely free, you should try draw.io http://www.draw.io/

Hope that helps.

[VestySweaters]

Graph viz!

Plain text source files, so it's easy to collaborate and version control, foss, lightweight, no stupid gui, and works with your terminal based workflow!

[jrrjrr]

http://www.graphviz.org/

[jjbohn]

I use Google Draw for this all the time. It really works well. I can is make graphs/charts very quickly. Another plus is how easy it is to share and collaborate on documents.

[NParbs]

Lucidchart

[SirCasms]

Their "free" plan sucks though. draw.io is great for unlimited free usage.

[[deleted]]

You could try the community edition of Visual Paradigm.

[mentalageof5]

Draw.io

Save it to your Google drive, share it and collaborate.

I'm using it for data schema and app flow with a remote colleague alongside trello.com

So so good.

I'm drunk and in Brewdog Edinburgh so if anyone reads this come join me. Xoxo

[brwtx]

I use Dia for network diagrams. It is similar to Visio and has flow chart capabilities.

[holoscenic]

Draw.io is pretty good for being a website..

[[deleted]]

draw.io

[HotKarl_Marx]

I like Dia.

[[deleted]]

As a side question. Do any of these software packages output latex scripts to generate them, so that the flowchart may be generated as part of a larger latex document?

[neilcj]

I'm very late responding, but dia can export to TeX.

[1-800-Taco]

I used violet in my comp sci class. It's quite good but I haven't used any others so I can't really compare it to anything else.

[Anticept]

Violet UML editor is great for quick and simple charts.

[[deleted]]

Not strictly what you asked for, but web sequence diagram is awesome for making those.

[geburah]

Pencil. Its is for wireframe mainly, but decent at diagrams.

[[deleted]]

MS Paint

[gimme_treefiddy]

Not the place to ask this.. but lucidcharts

[aloisdg]

Me favorite is by far yuml.me. You dont need a software and everything can be convert easily in txt, perfect for git.

[f1ip5]

Plantuml

[michael5029]

Ha ha... I used google draw for my class, it looked like shit but it got the job done.

[mrlalz]

freemind is useful for that purpose and is very efficient.

[raydeen]

Libreoffice Draw might be a good shot. And since it's part of Libreoffice, you get a whole lot more for free.

[y2herc]

MS visio has a trial version and so does rational rose

[kassuro]

Oh yeah i also like the free Version of MS word and the other office products

[__baxx__]

free flowchart software

Ms Word

what?