Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

This seems to be based on C4 which apparently is an heir to UML.<p>I love UML.<p>I know that is not dominant sentiment so it might get downvoted.<p>I worked with UML over decades now.<p>I refuse to use Visio, Draw.io or PlantUML for that part. I use a tool that knows UML and is constructed to quickly build UML diagrams.<p>Doing a Sequence diagram in draw io is something I find painful and slow.<p>My favorite tool is Visual Paradigm. It has the best intelligence for quickly building diagrams.<p>It also features two way code generation.<p>You can get diagrams created from code, and you can modify diagram to modify code.<p>From that you can get a lot of help (it is far from perfect) to create needed diagrams and also in maintaining them.<p>I have also used Sparx Enterprise Architect which is also very good.<p>In so far as creating higher level diagrams that Icepanel is most centered on, it should be greatly aided by a set of tools to discover and map artifacts in an automated manner.<p>Keeping diagrams up to date is a huge chore that it is nice to have help with.<p>Having to recode, my code, in a document for PlantUML is not something I could do either. There are some great tools for generating PlantUML diagrams and those are great.<p>We use some of that to generate certain diagrams automatically in our CI pipeline. When it is done running all diagrams are up to do date and placed in our documentation.<p>We use it to show each one of our microservices with a lot of data around then. And another one displays a lot of information about each of our container images.<p>Took a while to get that setup right.

I tend to use .drawio.png extension and then collaborate inside the repo in real-time using vscode live share (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;visualstudio.microsoft.com&#x2F;services&#x2F;live-share&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;visualstudio.microsoft.com&#x2F;services&#x2F;live-share&#x2F;</a>) and the drawio extension together (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketplace.visualstudio.com&#x2F;items?itemName=hediet.vscode-drawio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketplace.visualstudio.com&#x2F;items?itemName=hediet.v...</a>)<p>Then, in markdown&#x2F;readmes use .<p>It will render locally, and in GitHub, and also if you use remark or something like that, it will still render as an image.

Having fallen back in love with PlantUML recently I’ll never use a proprietary tool that doesn’t have declarative syntax. System diagrams and documentation are a crucial part of any software business and one that is regularly out of date as people end up using tools like draw.io which nobody knows how to get access to or use.

I&#x27;ve always felt that these type of tools shouldn&#x27;t have a traditional home page with sign up, sign in, etc. If you go to Excalidraw&#x27;s website, it immediately launches the application for you to start using it. If you need extra features, only then you go to a page that provides details, pricing, etc. This is a beautiful pattern that makes these type of tools a daily habit for people to use. I don&#x27;t want to create an account to try the app or use it in its most basic form.

I usually use Visio for diagrams like this. It&#x27;s a very powerful tool, but it&#x27;s expensive, and <i>really</i> fiddly to use such that everything is aligned and sized the way I want - I invariably spend <i>far</i> too long adjusting size and position.<p>Something like this could be really useful, and I&#x27;m keen to give it a try!<p>If the founder is here, a question: what formats can you export diagrams in? My biggest fears in using something like this would be lock-in, or it shutting down and losing everything.

A question I always have for diagramming software is how it handles refactoring. This is often the most frustrating part of every tool. How does IcePanel improve this experience? Group selection and dragging to hopefully have enough room for something new is not workable in complex diagrams.

I have been using whimsical for diagrams and prototyping prototypes. Some of my colleagues are converted after they have seen it. The ease of use is the best I have seen so far. It is bold and easy to read.<p>Seeing the demo page, I have to ask: why do we stay with the traditional black, grey and white colors for diagrams?

What on earth do diagrams have to do with trust in docs? Docs that are useful, accurate, and up to date would increase trust.

We use <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;diagrams.mingrammer.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;diagrams.mingrammer.com</a> in our team. Diagrams from python code.

Nice, I’m pretty excited to try this out for my personal projects. Been looking for something like lucidcharts but meant for code architectures.

I am searching for quite sometime an application which can detect, and convert hand drawn shapes on a computer (using mouse or stylus) to proper shapes. This will make life so much easier for someone who makes architecture diagrams frequently. The closest offering I could find was with iPad &#x27;Shape Recognition&#x27;[1]. But the number of shapes it detects is limited. It also does not appear to be really - meant for or integrated with - tools like draw.io.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;ipados&#x2F;ipados-14&#x2F;features&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;ipados&#x2F;ipados-14&#x2F;features&#x2F;</a>

&quot;Error: could not handle the request&quot; looks like HN hug of death did its job.

Is anyone using dot and&#x2F;or graphviz in earnest for something like this?

What tools like these need is monitoring capacity. Hook your diagrams to your logs and health status, and then you have a compelling reason to actually keep them up to date.

This looks nice. Personally I prefer draw.io desktop version for large complex diagrams, and use mermaid for smaller diagrams such as sequence diagrams.

Any thoughts oh lucidchart : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lucidchart.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lucidchart.com&#x2F;</a>

The Icepanel.io seems like an excellent start to an interesting project. But seems very early&#x2F;alpha.<p>Key features - be able to distinguish between connections flowing into a hub (Outlines); have bi-directional flows to illustrate different data exchanges; colours; lack of due to huge Pro sign up ad in Diagrams view are all hinderances.

That&#x27;s a beautiful website. Love the colors, mascot and the way you&#x27;ve laid out the information.

Tools are great, but here&#x27;s the million-dollar question: how do you make people maintain the docs?

Needs a copy editor. “Periodically” is spelled two different ways, both wrong.

I really want to check this out but whenever I try to create an account I keep getting &quot;broken link&quot; errors.

Can these be part of the source code repo and attached from ADRs?

Dark diagrams make for terrible documentation IMO.

I think this is partially why I started to hate crypto.<p>I was explaining to people that they were getting scammed ( they said they bought one coin) and i was looking it up since I didn&#x27;t know it, so i concluded that they were scammed.<p>They just didn&#x27;t believe me and said i was a liar. Their family friend who walked away with &gt;50k would never do that to them.<p>A lot of people just don&#x27;t understand cryptocurrency and greed had them losing their common sense, i was truelly disgusted by this.<p>Even as I had crypto until 2017 and earned a reasonable amount with it, I&#x27;ve started to become a non-believer in it. The existing coins are just an example of the blockchain and while the tech is great, an existing coin will never be adopted by a country. So it&#x27;s futile to believe that a certain coin will become the standard.<p>Authorities ( for good reason) will never allow that to happen.