An online virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn diagrams, with features supporting visual collaboration. A basic version of Excalidraw can be used free, but team and collaboration features are offered in Excalidraw+.
In scenarios like creating a quick mind map, flow diagram, explaining code with a diagram, or wanting to show how a specific scenario in code works to the team. In scenarios like there is a draft which I created in some other place and I want to continue here, I can't as upload option is missing. Other scenario is like I have downloaded a draft and want to import and continue, can't do that as well. Creating wireframes from the initial stage is hard, as everything should be hand drawn which is hard when the screens are already decided.
Omnigraffle is great for documentation, mapping, flowcharting, and other technical diagramming scenarios. It's simple enough to bang out a quick illustration and powerful enough to build complex blueprints for complicated technical systems. If you need cross-platform compatibility, though, you're probably better off looking elsewhere. If you want complex integration with data sources (ala Visio's SQL Server integration for shape metadata), OmniGraffle also falls short — but those scenarios are few and far between in my experience.
OmniGraffle is fairly simple to use, but the one thing I think it does best is working with curved lines, particularly if you are using some of the available arc templates. Drop an arc onto your page, then tell it the dimensions it needs to be, and viola! Done. Manipulating the arcs is as simple as clicking and dragging offset points.
OmniGraffle has also done an excellent job in stirring up the creative minds of many people who create templates and tools to work with OmniGraffle (not that Microsoft hasn't done so either), and managed to get the bulk of those into well organized repositories.
What it all boils down to for me is: it just works. One doesn't need to have a computer science degree to work with it either. It is as simple or complex as you want it to be.
I'd love to be able to keep more than one of the different tool tabs open at a time.
The stencils are amazing. Would be great if a whole lot more of the free ones came standard as opposed to having to download them from Graffletopia or other sites.
Excalidraw+ is very simple to use, navigate, and collaborate. You can quickly generate objects, text, lines, arrows, etc. to clearly explain an idea without spending too much time making it look pretty. It's great for initial ideation without getting bogged down in details. A quick user interface can be sketched in 30 seconds rather than spending time generating near-complete mockups that could be rejected
While these other tools are great for what they are, OmniGraffle’s solid focus on and support for diagramming makes it our tool of choice for communicating workflows and concept relationships, creating documentation, and creating other diagrams. Its libraries allow us to create designs quickly, and its ease of use enables us to use the tool widely across the company without much time or effort spent on onboarding.
Omnigraffle isn't an expensive software tool, so there isn't really any negative from the perspective of raw cost. Thinking in terms of time spent using it on a project - what you create in omnigraffle will inevitably lead to a dead end. It's useful only as documentation. There are other tools like Sketch that integrate into prototyping software and can create useable visual assets for applications in addition to being able to create wireframes.
