Omnigraffle

Although I've had my Mac for a few years now, every once in a while I stumble across a program that I had never known existed. Today I found Omnigraffle.



My version of Omnigraffle (v2.2) came bundled with Panther (I think) and somehow stuck around when I upgraded to Tiger - so for the moment its free and fully functional. As it turns out though, to upgrade to the latest version - v4, complete with bugfixes - I have to purchase a new license. I may actually end up doing that if it continues to prove to be as useful as it seems!

For those who haven't used or heard of Omnigraffle, let me give you a quick intro: its a standalone application that is part of the Omnigroup product range. This particular application is sold as a "Powerful diagramming & charting for Mac OS X". As far as I've used it, this seems to be a fairly accurate description.

At the moment I tend to use it to create system architecture flow charts and particle physics' Feynman Diagrams. Those annoying gammas can be squiggled out quickly and very accurately - creating quite a nice finish too.

One of the nice things about this program is its simplicity. To build a flow chart you simply drag the required shapes off of the "FlowChart" palette and place them onto your functional snap-to grid that forms the work area. Connection arrows and lines between objects is a simply three click process - Click on arrowed lines, click on start object, click on end object. Done.

As I've recently found out, it is also possible to get more palettes to increase the number of objects that you can place on the charts. These objects could be considered to be similar to Clip Art images that one might find in MS Office products... except that they are much crisper and less cheesy looking.

I would advise anyone wishing to create simple yet elegant technical diagrams to have a quick look at the trial version of the software. If after 20 minutes you aren't convinced that it will do what you want then move on and try another application.... but I don't think you'll find you have to!