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No vector graphics import of any kind? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hello, all.

I have just started using OmniGraffle, and find it a beautiful peice of functional design -- bravo, Omni-people! However, reading over the forums, it seems that this product's Achilles Heel is its near-total inability to reliably import content from other sources.

Now, it is completely understandable that Micosoft would make Visio XML a pale excuse of a "standard", so I did not really expect that method to be useful. But OmniGraffle's stock-in-trade is vector graphics, and the inability to read SVG, EPS, vector-PICT, or as far as I can tell, *any* standard vector graphics format is a complete deal-breaker.

Don't get me wrong, the drawing tools are nice, but if you want to create serious vector art, this is not the tool of choice; it's a magnificent layout and idea tool, but don't try to make your professional artist use it every day.

Attention, developers: we need the ability to import complex visual vector graphics -- it doesn't have to be Visio, but give us something!

Someone please tell me I'm wrong, and that vector graphics can be copied and pasted from Inkscape (didn't work for me), imported from a PDF written from OpenOffice (layers came out unaligned, fill patterns incorrect), imported from an Interface Builder file (anyone tried this?), or any other repeatable process.

I would buy the product, but for this sad deficiency.

:(

Thanks in advance for any advice,
-Ann
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnnOnemouse View Post
But OmniGraffle's stock-in-trade is vector graphics, and the inability to read SVG, EPS, vector-PICT, or as far as I can tell, *any* standard vector graphics format is a complete deal-breaker.
OmniGraffle has native support for PDF, EPS and Vector PICT: you should be able to drag any of these vector images directly onto a canvas (just as you might drag a stencil object or bitmap image).

OmniGraffle Professional can also import vector graphics from Visio XML documents (but not from Visio's proprietary binary format).

Quote:
Don't get me wrong, the drawing tools are nice, but if you want to create serious vector art, this is not the tool of choice; it's a magnificent layout and idea tool, but don't try to make your professional artist use it every day.
Our artist did most of his drawing using Adobe Illustrator when he was building the Gardening stencil. (Of course, that was before we added native support for Bezier curves in shapes in OmniGraffle 4, so the only way to do arbitrary scaleable curves was to author them using another vector graphics application.)

Quote:
Someone please tell me I'm wrong, and that vector graphics can be copied and pasted from Inkscape (didn't work for me),
Inkscape doesn't work because it produces SVG, and while OmniGraffle Professional exports to SVG it doesn't yet import from it. (We keep expecting Apple to add SVG support to the operating system itself, since they helped define the SVG 1.0 standard. But obviously that hasn't happened yet.)

Quote:
imported from a PDF written from OpenOffice (layers came out unaligned, fill patterns incorrect),
I'm not sure what the problem might have been with OpenOffice's PDF; does it render differently in OmniGraffle than it does in, say, Preview?

Quote:
imported from an Interface Builder file (anyone tried this?),
I'm not quite sure what sort of vector drawing you would expect to get out of an Interface Builder document; OmniGraffle Professional does import them (if you have the developer tools installed), but it just graphs the connections between the objects in the document (as opposed to trying to preserve any sort of vector graphics from the interface).

Quote:
or any other repeatable process.
The vector format we recommend is PDF: we leverage Mac OS X's built-in support for PDF (which is the basis of Mac OS X's graphics and printing systems), so anything that renders in Preview should render just as well in OmniGraffle (except that we make no attempt to render multiple pages).

If you're seeing problems when you open your PDF in Preview, then it sounds like you've found a bug in the authoring software (or possibly in Mac OS X itself) that should be reported to the appropriate party. If you're seeing a problem with PDF in OmniGraffle that you don't see in Preview, please let us know by sending feedback from the Help menu (or by sending email to omnigraffle@omnigroup.com).

Hope this helps!
 
Hi,

Has Apple implemented any form of native SVG support into the OS as yet? If so, will OG be able to import SVG files using it? If not, are there plans to build an SVG import capability into the app any time soon?

Regards
 
There's still no MacOS X built-in support for SVG and no indention to do so in near future.
Apple is referring to Safari for SVG functionality.

Consequently, it would be great to have a built-in support from OmniGraffle itself.
In fact, there are some frameworks available under free domain like SVGKit or Cairo.

Please add an option to import SVG for HiDPI-enabled stencils!
 
I was looking for an import of SVG images so that the SVG would be contained within a flat SVG instead of a folder with an SVG extension. I utilize an XML database so would appreciate clean XML. Any SVGs that I create end up in the database and are displayed through a web browser.

I would appreciate:
  • import of SVG files
  • exporting to a flat SVG for everything vector
  • some kind of forecast timeline for these features (not cast in stone, but an idea)

I really love using OmniGraffle Pro, except for the limited support of SVG in the form of export.
 
I have to add my +1 to this. I use ArgoUML to reverse-engineer my Java to UML class diagrams (which are pretty basic).

Argo exports in PS, EPS, SVG vector formats. For whatever reason, the PS and EPS won't place into Omni. SVG is preferred, but I can't import that format.

That leaves me with the non-vector PNG. ;-(

Please add SVG support ASAP.
 
No doubt, SVG has become the vector format of choice, especially with all the fun new HTML5 stuff.

Almost all of the assets I create now are SVGs, and its getting real obnoxious to have to PNG them before using in OGP wireframes. Native SVG import would be tremendously useful in my workflow.
 
Is there any news regarding SVG import? This is becoming more irritating as most diagramming apps for iPhone export to SVG and there is no way to start a diagram on a phone and then complete it in OmniGraffle. This has been a glaring hole in people's workflow around OG for many years now...
 
 


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