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OmniGraffle Pro vs ConceptDraw Pro. Opinions? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hi Guys!

I'm test driving both products at the moment. And would appreciate your insight in helping me to make a good choice.

My primary use of the s/w spins around IT diagrams (network, processes, etc.)

Comparing the two products out of the box and CDP wins. It looks slick with loads of stencils out of the box and seems to be more intuitive to work with. Loads of templates also available right out of the box. I know about Graffletopia, but it's not giving you as nice looking stencils as you get with CDP, which means you get something that the vendor thought about and made it look professional. Am I missing something here? I can't believe Omni guys didn't think about it.

Most of the people I'm interacting with use Visio for diagrams. What I found is neither of the two products deal with Visio files well enough. CDP doesn't open Visio .vsd files as OGP does, only opens XML Visio files.
Neither of the two would allow you to edit Visio files properly (connection points on objects go missing, layout gets messed up and behavior of objects is different to that in Visio) and when you save it and send back to Visio, document doesn't look well anymore.
Is there a plan to have a better support for Visio documents in OG in the coming versions that would give me better results?

Basically, when (if) you made the decision between the two products what feature(s) steered you in direction of the product that you chose in the end? I guess we can have people on this forum who use ConceptDraw and maybe thinking to try out OmniGraffle.

Price is nearly identical, so it's more about the features I guess.

Also, there are very few comparisons of the two products that I can find searching the Net and mostly related to older versions of CDP and every time people seem to recommend OG over CDP. Even one of the posters was pointing out that the stencils in CDP are good and he was looking for a way of exporting it into OG. I was sitting scratching my head as of what is missing in CDP that OG has. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for a bit confusing post, but I'd like to know a bit more about the product that a short trial use can reveal. Unfortunately I don't have much time every day to try the software and using Visio in Fusion to get by, but would like to go all Mac on the tooling front.

Regards,
Alex.
 
Anyone?

Guys, please, help!
 
Ok, I will give it a go.

Last time I looked (and please, I am not a CD expert), CD was five products and $1,400. Now why would there be five separate CD products, why would I want five separate products, when I have one OG for $200 (ok, it was $50 when I bought it !). Even if you take CDProject (vs OmniPlan) out, you're still looking at $1,200 vs $200. I am not saying they are all different, and you need all five; but you do need three or four to equal OGP. So I don't know how you came up with equal dollars.

Can you draw something in CDMindMap and open it in CDPro ? Vice versa ? What are the limitations of each product (another way of asking, why are there five) ?

On the intuitive drawing side, and my attempts were on the one-before-current release of CD, well, Omni just wipes the floor with CDP, so I would buy OG over CDP just for that one single reason. I did not spend too much time looking at all the features, but for the features I did look at, OG won over CDP every time. CDP is non-intuitive, both in the non-Mac sense as well as the drawing sense. Half the time I had enter text values in boxes to get the lines/shapes I wanted in CDP; in OG I just click and draw.

But the problem is, you sound like you already have a handle on the comparison ...
 
i have not done an extensive review of the recent version, but I did (and have) tried multiple diagramming tools over the years, including CD.

I've landed on OGPro and been a happy user for years now mainly because of how it works: I find it gets out of the way and lets me focus on my content more.

More room for thinking about my content and less fiddling with the tool, the better the diagram.

While I start, often, on paper, there is much refinement that goes on in an OGPro diagram for me.

Of course, everyone is different, so you need to find a tool that fits your style and thinking.

-- Morgan
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekAsirvadem View Post
Ok, I will give it a go.

Last time I looked (and please, I am not a CD expert), CD was five products and $1,400. Now why would there be five separate CD products, why would I want five separate products, when I have one OG for $200 (ok, it was $50 when I bought it !). Even if you take CDProject (vs OmniPlan) out, you're still looking at $1,200 vs $200. I am not saying they are all different, and you need all five; but you do need three or four to equal OGP. So I don't know how you came up with equal dollars.
When I was searching the Net for reviews I noticed that people were mentioning huge price difference. Maybe they have dropped the price, I don't know. I can see that CDP is €199 including few plug-ins (network diagramming included). The full Office suit is €415. That's what's prompted me to compare the two. I don't need full Office set, all I need is replacement to Visio and my understanding is that CDP alone is enough.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekAsirvadem View Post
Can you draw something in CDMindMap and open it in CDPro ? Vice versa ? What are the limitations of each product (another way of asking, why are there five) ?
I think it has changed considerably since you looked at it last time. I don't know why would I need CDMindMap? I think it's something like OmniOutliner rather than OmniGraffle.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekAsirvadem View Post
But the problem is, you sound like you already have a handle on the comparison ...
Not really. My first impression with OG stencils was disappointing. I found it short of what I needed compared to Visio. And when I moved some of the stencils from Visio to OG, it didn't behave the same way or at least it didn't for me.

In fairness CDP is not 100% Visio friendly either. So my first impression was based purely on stencils alone. The reason I asked here for help was partly because of this. I felt that I must have misunderstood something because I can't be the only one who would like to see a better set of stencils. How do you find OG stencils for networking diagrams? I was reading Earl's post and scratching my head how the heck did he manage to put this together in 30 minutes given that I can't find any of the stencils he used in OG 5 ( I know he used v4, but still. Has they changed stencils in OG 5 and where would they hide v4 ones? ). It must be me hastily testing the product. I can't imagine that stencils in Earl's example have been removed from OG in the new version or he managed to create the whole set within the same 30 minutes. I must ask him about it.

One thing I see in OG that CDP is missing is layers. I mean they also have layers, but it's different approach and OG's I like better.

I've being playing more with CDP after my last post (unfortunately my OG trial period run out few days after I found CDP and I can't continue comparing the two in parallel) and I found that Visio support in CDP, that was looking a bit better at first glance, is not as flawless as it seemed.

I think it's to be expected given M$ reputation to keep their standards secret as long as they can. That makes collaboration with M$ only people quite difficult. I know I can ask them to save Visio diagram as an image or a PDF, but that makes very difficult (or even impossible. depends on the diagram complexity) to make quick amendment to the diagram and send it back to the person. Bloody M$!

On a final note, I see very robust and friendly OG community ;-) and people seems to be happy with OG. I must try and wipe out OG's directory in ~/Library and see if re-install gives me another chance to test drive it.

Thanks a million, guys! Your answers help a lot.
 
I'm not positive, but I'm guessing the network diagram in that blog post is using one or more stencils from Graffletopia. You can download any of those stencils and install them, as well - the built-in ones aren't the only ones.

Does that help at all? Haven't used ConceptDraw, so I really can't comment much on it. (Do the various "flavors" have actual functional differences, or do they just have different stencil libraries?)

Oh, and if you email us, we can extend your trial period. Obviously, we can't do that indefinitely, but if someone needs a bit more time to decide if they need the app, we're not opposed to that. :-)
 
Yeah, Graffletopia is the way to go. But do read this thread, and this caveat. All stencils are not created equal. I have seen some of the silly isometric Visio style stencils uploaded to Graffletopia recently, that are better than those that were there before.

Aside. Personally, when working with custs who are Visio, Viso and nothing but Visio, I just give them such great OG drawings that they couldn't dream of erecting in Visio, that they just leave the drawing to me after that. Of course I choose what drawings I will do, and what they will do. But it is MUCH simpler and faster to have them send change requests to me, rather than all of us making changes to a single diagram. Half the problem is to get them to get away from the stupid (looks cute but communicates nothing semantic or symbolic )Visio isometric symbols, and get into the real world of standards (M$ is anti-standard, and it in itself is NOT a "de facto standard"; it is a single-vendor product, period), and standard symbols. Likewise, I use OG exclusively but the symbols are all standard: not Visio copies; not cutesy schmalsty; but rigid and consistent.

Last edited by DerekAsirvadem; 2010-10-14 at 07:02 AM..
 
I have test driven both packages as well. Though conceptdraw does seem to have more stencils, i find it less intuitive and more busy/complex to use than OmniGraffle.

This is of course a subjective view but I needed to make a quick choice and chose OmniGraffle.
 
 


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