You won’t find all the slick graphics and advanced capabilities of Visio, but it is relatively straightforward to learn and the price is right. One option for Windows that’s easy to install, use, and is appropriate for all types of informal diagrams is Dia ( ). There are several shareware or freeware applications out there that offer Visio-like capabilities, but many are geared for an engineering audience and can be difficult to use. The only problem? It costs money! What if you just have to put together an organizational chart once for a volunteer gig? Or you only think you’ll need it to quickly diagram a workflow? Visio is expensive enough that if you’re only going to use it a few times, it may not be cost-effective to purchase it.

Visio comes packaged with a lot of great-looking graphics and a ton of connector types. Visio makes it quite easy to create simple objects, add descriptive text, and then add connectors to show the relationships among the objects.

Since those terms may not mean a whole lot to you, let’s look at some examples of things you might create in Visio:Įxample 4 – A Layout and Map of a Physical SpaceĪs you can see from these examples, Visio is used to create structured graphics where entities, or objects, in the graphic have some sort of relationship to the other entities. Visio is a Microsoft desktop application geared for building informational, structured graphics, like diagrams, flowcharts, hierarchy structures, and so on. If you’re an IU community member and go to IUWare to download Microsoft apps, you will not find Microsoft Visio.

Free alternatives to visio