Introduction

Diagramming, often playing as second fiddle to technical writing, is an important part of many engineers' daily work. Draw.io, as an incumbent in this space, has enjoyed a stable and growing userbase, and rightfully so, as it offers a practical solution for diagramming and flowcharting that suits many usecases. Specifically for engineering and other technical diagrams however, we believe Vexlio is better suited than Draw.io, and we'll look at a few reasons why in this post.

Points of comparison

We'll compare Vexlio vs Draw.io in a few specific areas:

• Focus and clarity. How do Vexlio and Draw.io compare in enabling you to stay focused on your content?
• Precision. Do Vexlio and Draw.io offer a comparable toolset for easy high-precision diagramming?
• Overall productivity. How can you expect your overall productivity and experience to be when using Vexlio vs Draw.io?

These areas form core aspects of how users typically interact with diagramming software in general, and together paint a picture of the overall experience you can expect. We'll look at each now in more detail.

Focus and clarity

By default, Draw.io's interface presents a physical paper-sized area as the main region for you to draw your content. This is a relic of the past, when most diagrams were destined eventually for print media of one kind or another. In contrast, Vexlio's interface presents a completely blank and nearly-infinite canvas for you to work in. While not a new paradigm, Vexlio's infinite drawing canvas for diagramming represents a shift in how you can think about your diagrams: not in terms of physical paper dimensions, but in terms of diagram complexity, or semantic "reach." We have found this mental shift to lend a significant boost in focus as you're creating your diagrams.

Additionally, Vexlio as a whole is a simple and focused app, designed to help you keep your eye (literally) on what matters: your content. Our interface doesn't present you with reams of buttons and menus — we've put our focus instead on paring the app down to the essentials, the tools and content types that are most basic to all types of diagrams. And we've made those tools work in just the way you need.

A lot of engineering work comes down to taming complexity, breaking gnarly problems down into simpler, smaller-scoped pieces. Reducing visual clutter and focusing on the essentials is one way that Vexlio helps you do that for your engineering diagrams.

Precision

Engineering as a discipline is one that frequently demands precision and attention to detail. A strong focus on precision can become a way of thinking in its own right. In that sense, it's no surprise that one of the most common complaints about most diagramming tools is how much time is lost nudging shapes and arrows around, pixel by pixel, until they're perfectly aligned and spaced.

Vexlio places a strong emphasis on precision, and efficient precision at that. With a robust system of snapping and connector constraints (more on constraints in a later post), Vexlio aims to offer easy precision such that you never again have to argue with a line that won't stay straight. While Draw.io does offer some alignment and other guides, after using Vexlio for a while you'll see firsthand how our snapping and alignment system simply feels better to use.

Productivity

We believe that attention to detail and precision should not come at the expense of usability and productivity. With each feature that we design for Vexlio, we make careful efforts to ensure that the feature is intuitive, quick to use, and composes cleanly with the snapping system and other precision-oriented features. In other words, Vexlio offers tools designed with productivity as a first-class concern.

Here are a few of the tools Vexlio offers with a deliberate eye towards productivity:

• Code syntax highlighting. Engineering diagrams frequently benefit from small snippets of code. Vexlio offers automatic syntax highlighted code text boxes with support for over 50 languages.
• Connectors with labels. Connecting shapes with lines or curves is one of the core components of almost all diagrams. Vexlio's robust connector system lets you add text labels with auto-placement to your connectors with just one click.
• Rapid grid duplication. Duplication of an object or objects into a customizable grid is a somewhat subtle but extremely powerful design tool. After you use this tool for yourself, you'll start to recognize more and more opportunities for it to reduce redundant work and excessive copy/pasting while drawing.

Design tools are only as useful as their environment allows them to be — no tool is smart enough to overcome slow or laggy performance of the app itself. Frequently, users of Draw.io experience performance drops and UI slowdowns as their diagrams get more complex. Vexlio is designed with performance in mind, using the latest web technologies including GPU rendering and WASM for accelerated compute. No matter how large or complex your diagram is, you can depend on Vexlio to give you smooth scrolling and low-latency UI responses. Removing the friction of a slow UI pays you dividends.

Want more comparison?

That's it for this article. If you're curious to read more, we've put together a focused comparison of Vexlio vs Draw.io, specifically for engineers: Read the full comparison →

Dive in to Vexlio today, no account or signup needed: Launch app now