Re: Cross-platform Network Drawing Tool

On Jul 31, 2006, at 16:04, Merton Campbell Crockett wrote:

> I'm looking for an application or tool to create and maintain  
> network drawings.  The key attribute that the software must have is  
> that it can be installed on systems with different operating  
> systems.  It must provide the same functionality on all systems on  
> which it runs.
>
> In addition, it must have the ability to import network drawings  
> created using Microsoft Visio.
>
> The operating systems that it needs to support are Windows XP,  
> Linux (SUSE, Redhat, Slackware, etc.), Solaris, and Mac OS X.
>
> Can someone on this list recommend an application that satisfies  
> the above requirements?

Graphviz is an interesting tool, but unlike Visio, in which I  
understand you manually lay out a graph, Graphviz is designed to  
automatically lay it out for you; you just need to specify the  
relationships between nodes and it figures out where best to draw  
them. You can also supply node positions yourself, but that's not its  
primary goal so I'm not sure how well it works for that. It is very  
cross-platform though and should run on all the operating systems you  
list. You can learn more on the web site:

http://www.graphviz.org/

You can ask questions on the mailing list, where the developers are  
quite active:

http://www.graphviz.org/MailingList.php

I searched the list archives and see this message from 2 years ago  
from one of the Graphviz developers about a possible Visio to  
Graphviz converter; not sure if it's gotten any further since then:

https://mailman.research.att.com/pipermail/graphviz-interest/ 
2004q2/001471.html