Visio Alternative For Mac
OpenOffice Draw – Best Alternative of MS Visio OpenOffice is a Visio alternative or MS Office alternative since it was first released in 2002. The project started by Sun Microsystems, who later donated the concept to Apache Software Company. The original idea was to create an open-source product that helps people who cannot afford MS office. SmartDraw is the only alternative to Visio® that runs on a Windows desktop (behind the firewall), on a Mac, and online. With the best Visio® import and export capability in the industry, SmartDraw is the easy, powerful and affordable Visio® alternative.
This article is written intended to guide you how to Install Microsoft Visio Mac / MacBook Pro / MacBook Air running OS X El Capitan.
One program that missing when using MacBook is there is no Microsoft Visio for Mac. Although Microsoft has been officially releasing Microsoft Office (e.g Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for Mac, Microsoft still does not release Visio for Mac, at least until now.
- 3 Microsoft Visio Alternatives for Mac OS. Microsoft Visio is arguably the most popular diagramming software in the planet. This is understandable because in the early days Windows operating system had a major market share and Visio was the only compatible diagramming tool. But the Mac is starting to challenge Windows and Mac OS is very.
- If though you’re just looking for a free alternative to Visio on Mac that can do the basics like flowcharts, process flows, floor plans and other diagrams, you’ve definitely come to the right place. We’ve taken a look at some superb free alternatives to Visio for Mac users, most of which can even open and edit Visio files.
Since I work as a network administrator, Microsoft Visio is very important for me to draw network diagram / topology. Although there are many Visio alternatives for Mac such ConceptDraw, LucidChart, SmartDraw, or OmniGraffle according to my opinion they can not replace Visio. It is the best because of its simplicity and easy to use. Another reason is I am already familiar with Visio when running Windows and also already bought the software license so buying another program for this purpose is wasting money.
In this article I will not talk about which software is better. I want to show you how to install Microsoft Visio on Mac running OS X El Capitan on top of Wine, thanks to WineHQ team for making this great tool. It should be applicable on previous version of OS X such as OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, and Mac OS X Mountain Lion.
Lets start with the installation process
Windows programs can be run on OS X, Linux and BSD via WINE (Windows Emulator) so first we need to install wine and winetricks.
We can install wine and winetricks packages using Homebrew, follow this post how to install Wine on OS X.
Define Visio Home directory
Although it is not necessary, it is better to set environment folder for Visio. We will set it under $HOME/.vision2007. Inside your $HOME directory (/Users/your_username), create .visio2007 directory.
Perform Wine initialisation and setup of WINEPREFIX in .visio2007
We need several packages be installed to run Visio 2007. Those packages are gdiplus, msxml6, dotnet20, riched20, and corefonts. Install them using winetricks as follows:
Capture example of installing .Net Framework (dotnet20) is as in image below:
After installing the packages above, then run Wine configuration editor (winecfg)
In Wine configuration, under Libraries tab make sure that gdiplus, msxml6, riched20 are set to native. See image below!
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Run Visio setup installation
Once the above dependency packages installed and configured, we are ready to run the installation.
After the installation completed and successful, you can run Visio using command below:
Visio should be running well without any problem.
Create visio script
To make it easier to run Visio using Terminal, create a script named as ‘visio’.
Copy and paste the following command into the visio script. Change the ‘your-username’ accordingly with yours.
Make it executable and then move it into $PATH
To run Visio, just type visio in Terminal.
Microsoft Visio is arguably the most popular diagramming software in the planet. This is understandable because in the early days Windows operating system had a major market share and Visio was the only compatible diagramming tool. But the Mac is starting to challenge Windows and Mac OS is very popular among techies. Below are few Visio alternatives to Mac OS which you can use for your diagramming needs.
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle is a product very similar to Visio and in some areas it is much better than Visio as well. It allows you to import and export some Vision formats, so if you are planning on using both the software in different machines then this is a very good option. It has support for all the major diagram types and the drawing interface is very user friendly.
OmniGraffle has two versions, standard edition costs 99.99$ while the professional edition costs 199.99$. Checking out comparison of features available in the websites is advisable before selecting which version to buy. For users with simple diagramming needs, the standard edition is more than enough. If you’re an educational institute or a non-profit you are entitled to a discounted price.
Omnigraffle
Creately
Creately Online Diagramming Tool is another good Visio alternative for Mac OS. Because it’s a web based application you can access your diagrams from anywhere in the world. It supports all the major diagram types but doesn’t support every diagram type in Visio. It is much suited for project teams, because of the online collaboration support.
If you are keen to draw diagrams offline there is a desktop version that costs 75$. The online version is 5$ per month and there are team plans for discounted rates. They also give discounts for educational institutes and non-profits.
Visio Equivalent For Mac
Dia
Dia is an open source diagramming tool modeled very similar to Visio. As their websites says this is more suited for casual drawing and not the best solution for complex business drawings.
It doesn’t support the same number of diagram types, but if you are just looking to draw a simple flowchart then this might be the best solution for you. There are various additional downloads like shapes available to you. You won’t find any dedicated support so you have to rely a lot on documentation.
Mentioned above are some good Microsoft Visio alternatives for Mac OS. There are many more similar products with advantages and disadvantages. Ease of use, cost, reliability and security are some of the factors you should consider when choosing a suitable diagramming product.