[HN Gopher] Show HN: OneModel - Diagramming tailor-made for Soft...
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Show HN: OneModel - Diagramming tailor-made for Software Engineers
Author : koahmad
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-02-01 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.onemodel.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.onemodel.app)
| nivertech wrote:
| The best diagramming tool will combine bidirectional drawing
| using either WYSIWYG or Diagrams-as-Code.
|
| Plus VSCode extension which will make editing these diagrams
| inside the git repo a first class citizen.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I'd think a tool "tailor-made for Software Engineers" would use a
| human readable text format that can be stored in a VCS repository
| along side the other documentation. It could work if the GUI
| outputs a simple text file, but this looks like it'd output an
| image.
| lcall wrote:
| FWIW, you might want to search for project naming conflicts. Mine
| (an AGPL knowledge manager that stores arbitrary knowledge in a
| single data model, using postgresql & scala, hoping to move to
| rust and sqlite) is at http://onemodel.org (though nearly stalled
| due to health issues; I plan to continue in future though), and I
| remember finding some unrelated commercial project once, maybe
| onemodel-sys.com or such.
| codebower wrote:
| Wow, this is super quick and easy. It will definitely be
| replacing draw.io for my cloud architecture diagrams immediately.
| The only feature I would request is text boxes for notes.
| koahmad wrote:
| Thanks, glad you liked it. Adding sticky notes on diagrams is
| on the roadmap, hopefully in the next month or so.
| mbesto wrote:
| This is actually really well done. Keeps it simple and fits 90%
| of the use cases for when I create arch diagrams. You've got me
| sold.
| koahmad wrote:
| Thank you!
| vanpythonista wrote:
| This looks amazing! Thank you :) Is there a way to request more
| icons to be added or a way to add custom icons? This is the
| probably the one thing that stops me from replacing draw.io with
| this!
| koahmad wrote:
| Glad you liked it! Hoping to add a request icon form in the app
| soon and custom icons down the line. In the mean time, feel
| free to email support[at]onemodel.app with the list and I will
| add them asap.
| tlhunter wrote:
| I've been using the OneModel beta for a couple months now,
| watching as it matures.
|
| Personally, I'm a huge draw.io fan, and I use the desktop app for
| many things. While draw.io is great for many types of diagrams
| it's certainly perfect at none of them. At the end of the day I
| find myself creating boxes of the same size, formatting lines to
| be the same style, and routing arrows all around the place.
|
| That's what I love about OneModel: it's currently built as a tool
| to design system diagrams. I don't have to muck around with box
| sizes, OneModel knows that a box is a service. I don't have to
| muck around with line widths and arrow styles, OneModel knows
| that an arrow represents a service relationship. I don't need to
| route arrows, OneModel knows that an arrow shouldn't overlap a
| service icon.
|
| I'm really looking forward to some of the obvious places this
| tool can go. Attach metadata to a service that points to a GitHub
| repo and get deployment status. Attach metadata to a line to
| specify protocol, jump to a firewall rule, or consume Prometheus
| metrics. Maybe we'll even be able to export a diagram as a
| Terraform script one day!
| munk-a wrote:
| Does anyone have any information on the tool pricing? It doesn't
| appear to let you take a gander at any pricing information before
| logging in to use the tool.
| koahmad wrote:
| The tool is free for individuals and will remain free after the
| beta. Pricing would be for team usage (currently early access)
| and is still tbd. Early access teams will receive a discount.
| site-packages1 wrote:
| I would love to try this, sounds like it solves a need my team
| currently uses Mermaid/Drawio/etc. for. But looks like it's
| behind an account setup screen. :(
| koahmad wrote:
| Great point, thanks. We'll explore creating a playground where
| the diagrams are stored locally to eliminate the account setup
| barrier.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| I would be happy just to try it out without saving if I don't
| have to create an account.
| fold_left wrote:
| Kudos, it looks excellent
| chishaku wrote:
| Check out mermaid [0] for plain text diagramming that's easily
| version controlled.
|
| It's also natively rendered in obsidian [1] without any plugins.
|
| Not affiliated, just very happy with this plain text and local
| workflow.
|
| [0]: https://mermaid-js.github.io [1]: https://obsidian.md/
| koahmad wrote:
| Hi HN! I'm building a diagramming tool optimized for software
| engineering use cases.
|
| In previous jobs, I've had to draw many diagrams, whether to
| accompany design specifications or to explain something to peers.
| I've always felt drawing diagrams was too time consuming even
| though it was incredibly beneficial to my peers. That led me to
| creating a diagramming tool that allows software engineers to
| create diagrams quickly while remaining neat and presentable.
|
| A few notable features:
|
| - When drawing arrows, the tool automatically routes the arrows
| for you (using A* pathfinding and a nudging algorithm [1]).
|
| - The tool has a wide variety of icons to choose from and I'm
| adding more. The goal here is to add all the icons a software
| engineer might need.
|
| - Everything is placed on a grid with placement rules so the user
| doesn't have to worry about alignment.
|
| - Embedding live (auto-updating) diagrams in Notion or using
| IFrames. GitHub support coming soon.
|
| I understand the tool doesn't support all use cases, I was
| primarily focused on architecture diagrams. I hope to support
| more types of diagrams (sequence, db schemas, flow charts, etc)
| in the future. Hopefully this is a good starting point to gauge
| feedback on the direction I'm heading towards.
|
| OneModel is in beta and is completely free to use. It will remain
| free for individuals after the beta. I'd love to hear your
| thoughts and feedback! I'll be around to answer any questions.
|
| If you'd like to reach out to me, feel free to email me at
| khaled[at]onemodel.app
|
| [1] If you're interested in these types of algorithms, this paper
| is great: https://users.monash.edu/~mwybrow/papers/wybrow-
| gd-2009.pdf
| Terretta wrote:
| Huge believer in model-aware diagramming. Filled out your Teams
| wait list.
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| Graffur wrote:
| It's a bit buggy.. sometimes when I dropped an icon in, it would
| disappear while I was typing to filter.
|
| Looks good though and I will try again on a non-FF browser in
| work. Where do the files get saved? One of the best things about
| draw.io is that it just works off local files.
| koahmad wrote:
| Will look into the bug, sorry about that. Everything is cloud
| based. In other comments I got suggestions for a way to create
| diagrams without an account. I'm looking into that and that
| would probably include a local-file component. Thanks for your
| feedback.
| d--b wrote:
| This looks amazing. Kudos
|
| There is one feature I always wished existed in engineering
| diagramming tools: it's the ability to hook up some logging or
| status report.
|
| For instance, on each of these nodes, there could be an ID, and I
| would send a post request from my servers that says "node ID x is
| down", and the tool would just show a red dot and maybe a "take
| me to the logs" button, that would be huge.
|
| Which is to say, I don't just want a diagram, cause diagrams get
| outdated, I want a dashboard. Dashboards get updated, cause you
| look at them.
|
| Anyways, just a thought.
| koahmad wrote:
| Thank you! That's a great idea and it's what I'm working
| towards. I'd like the ability to connect your diagrams to
| various event sources or even metadata, to help keep them
| alive. At the moment though, I'm trying to put together the
| building blocks to get there.
| evo_9 wrote:
| I've been looking for exactly this for some time - thank you for
| creating it!
|
| Maybe consider making a VScode extension out of it; you could
| then have it generate actual class files from the drawing.
|
| This is something VSCode lacks that big brother Visual Studio has
| had forever (cd designer).
| koahmad wrote:
| I think a VSCode extension would be pretty cool. I'll have to
| checkout out cd designer, seems interesting. Thanks for the
| feedback and glad you liked the tool!
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