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Add to SafariWhen comparing Dia vs Microsoft Visio, the Slant community recommends Microsoft Visio for most people. In the question“What are the best flowchart / diagram softwares?” Microsoft Visio is ranked 3rd while Dia is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Microsoft Visio is:
Visio has the most thorough set of standard support and tool-set.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Tons of icon sets
Has flowcharts, uml, chemical engineering, electronics, and dozens of other complete sets, built in.
Pro Free and open source
Pro Custom gzipped XML format
Pro Complete set of tools
Visio has the most thorough set of standard support and tool-set.
Pro De facto standard
Microsoft Visio is the de facto industry standard diagram creation software.
Pro Looks good
Pro Easy usage
Cons
Con Unmaintained
Dia has not been updated since 2009. It's already a very complete piece of software, but still sad.
Con UX is a joke
UX is not good enough. For example, to edit element text you must double-click it, then click text box, and then you can start typing text.
Con Very clumsy for state diagrams, limited features
Con Pretty expensive
Con Proprietary
Con Imperfect integration with Office
Since Visio was acquired, not originally developed by Microsoft, integration is not as seamless as the core Office Suite is known for. Diagrams can get corrupted while importing from Visio to Word or Powerpoint.
