Serendipity35

Made in Sketchup

Another app that I'm coming across are online ways of drawing flow charts, layouts, org charts, diagrams and even far more sophisticated 3D artwork.

So, I suppose some of these are alternatives to Microsoft’s Visio.

NJIT offers Visio to all its students as part of our larger Microsoft licensing, so here it's not an issue of having the software available.

Perhaps, you do not have access to Visio or similar software - OR - perhaps you find Visio too difficult to learn. You might want to try using an online app.

OmniGraffle (from the OmniGroup) is an interesting one (but it's for Mac OS X). It's great that software like this gathers a community around it, so if you go to Graffletopia, you'll find many free downloadable stencil sets for it from maps to science or architecture - even Lego People and blocks.

Take this drawing up a few notches and you have Google Sketchup which is a powerful but fairly easy drawing system that streamlines and simplifies 3D design.

If you use Google Earth, Google SketchUp allows you to place your models using real-world coordinates and share them with the world using the Google 3D Warehouse.

Check out the review of the commercial version of Sketchup 5 that goes for $640 to get a good idea of what it can do, and what a deal it is to get the free version.

Anyone out there have drawing programs they would recommend in either the Visio or Sketchup categories? Free & open source preferred, of course...