Top all-time · #1280
yWorks, the diagramming experts
Company blog · yworks.com/blogprogrammingdesign
yWorks, the diagramming experts is the company blog at yworks.com, writing about programming and design. Since 2008, 56 different Hacker News readers have linked it 82 times, most often “Mind map / flowcharts with automatic layouts that work”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly mention yEd, yWorks' diagram editor, for auto-arranging graphs. The blog is linked for posts on graph recognition and automatic metro map generation, and one commenter urges reading it.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter says they strongly encourage people to read the blog.1
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
High-quality software components for graph analysis, automatic graph layout, and visualization.
Most-linked posts?
- Mind map / flowcharts with automatic layouts that work30 people · 37 mentions · first linked 2016-07-18
- YEd - Graph Editor9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2008-05-19
- /yed-live/4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-11-19
What Hacker News says?
After looking for good tools in this space, to create documentation diagrams, I stayed with Draw.io and yEd[1]. The latter has a pretty cool feature that re-arranges all objects according to some predefined layout. Quite neat. [1]: https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website”Submitted Recognizing Graphs from Images as a story · 88 points
HN discussionMildly related: for complex diagrams where too much overlaps, consider yEd - which has functionality to rearrange boxes to minimize overlaps (and other settings) https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Monodraw”Submitted SVG, Canvas, WebGL? Visualization Options for the Web as a story · 46 points
HN discussionRelated: eYd - https://www.yworks.com/products/yed It lets you auto "re-flow" diagrams using different algorithms (e.g. fewest intersections between arrows, center-out, etc).
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Glider – open-source eInk monitor with an emphasis on low latency”Submitted Mind map / flowcharts with automatic layouts that work as a story · 42 points
HN discussionThanks, first time I hear of it! Link: https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Ask HN: Which tool do you use to create beautiful diagrams?”Submitted YEd – Graph Editor as a story · 2 points
HN discussion(yWorks employee here, having worked on that Graph Drawing Contest) Thank you for the kind words. I've tried to make it mobile-friendlier, after our marketing team told me that most people who come via Twitter use a phone. But we kinda ran out of time, so I only managed to fix the most egregious problems. By now I also have a few ideas how to get the edge paths to be much better (and built-in Bézier spline routing w…
Comment linking /yed-live/
on “Create diagrams with code using Graphviz”Submitted YEd - Graph Editor as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNot sequence diagrams but a tool to make diagrams in general yEd - http://yworks.com -- been using it since a long time - it's Java based, so works on all platforms and it's free to use.
Comment linking /
on “Swimlanes.io – generated editable sequence diagrams”> I wonder though, are there any alternatives to inscape in which you can draw graphs quickly? yEd [0] might be one. There's also an online version with (currently) a tad reduced feature set [1]. [0] https://www.yworks.com/products/yed [1] https://www.yworks.com/products/yed-live There are a number of other applications, though. I still like Graphviz for quickly creating a graph structure, but tweaking its layouts c…
Comment linking /products/yed-live
on “I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape”I didn't know about draw.io's license - that is great. I have been enjoying yEd but also looking for other diagramming software since rotating text is difficult in yEd, and it's not free software [2]. [1] https://www.yworks.com/products/yed [2] http://yed.yworks.com/support/qa/515/why-not-an-open-source-...
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Inkscape Moves to GitLab”At least the subways seem not that bad: https://www.yworks.com/assets/images/blog/tokyo.1e410d12c2.s... There are more here in the article (clicking an image opens a slideshow): https://www.yworks.com/blog/automatic-metro-map-generation
Comment linking /blog/automatic-metro-map-generation
on “Roman Roads (2017)”yEd from yWorks - https://www.yworks.com/products/yed has excellent features (with auto-arranging of nodes for better readability). Might be useful :) ps - it's FREE!
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Ask HN: Is there a better way to document complex software architectures?”Related: yEd graph editor with my favorite feature: automatic diagram untangling / re-arrangement / reflow. https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Diagrams: Open-Source Alternative to Lucidchart”I like using yEd[0] for quickly drawing workflow graphs. It exports as GraphML, but you'll have to convert it to dot yourself. [0]: https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Graphviz in the browser”I like Yed(1)for charts and graphs. It works in Linux/Win/Mac and is freely available, but not open source. 1) https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “FreeBSD 13.0 – Full Desktop Experience”When I'm not using orgmode I usually use yED[0] for diagrams and graphs. Not specifically mind-mapping software, but close enough for my purposes. [0] https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Why Don't We Have a General-Purpose Tree Editor? (2014)”http://www.yworks.com/products/yed and GraphML ?
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Why Don't We Have a General-Purpose Tree Editor? (2014)”I use yEd [0] for live editing in meetings. It has auto-layout. Not intuitive but faster to use than everything else. The web version is easier. [0] https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Diagram Maker: Open sourcing IoT visualization”For Windows users who prefer native apps and control over their data, Connected Text (paid, closed source ultimate kitchen sink with 30 days trial)[1] and WikiPad (free, open-source wiki engine)[2] are good alternatives to Roam. Personally, I use TreeSheets [3] for note-taking and try to organize them as nodes in yEd [4] when I want to gain insight, but that quickly grows out of control and becomes unmanageable. Aut…
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Roam: Why I Love It and How I Use It”I remember yEd from university 2 decades ago so got excited by the idea of yFiles. Until I calculated [1] the license price - for a single developer on a single project it'd be $14000+$4200 maintenance. Wow. 1. https://www.yworks.com/products/yfiles-for-html/pricing/#/co...
Comment linking /products/yfiles-for-html/pricing/
on “Handbook of Graph Drawing and Visualization (2013)”We visualise certain data structures (DAGs and trees) for debugging and documentation with https://graphviz.org (EPL) and https://yworks.com/yed (proprietary, freeware).
Comment linking /yed
on “Ask HN: What diagrams do you use in software development?”If we talk about professional use, then Powerpoint (many years ago), then Visio (also many years ago), then yEd (by yWorks, https://www.yworks.com/products/yed ). Then there are a ton of specialized open-source tools, with varying quality. Mermaid improved a lot. PlantUML has a lot of options, but I would not use it professionally. draw.io has also plenty of options, but has some usability issues in the frame of a f…
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Ask HN: What diagrams do you use in software development?”for 2) did you try yEd? https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?”Both use yEd http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yfiles_about.html
Comment linking /en/products_yfiles_about.html
on “Palantir Pricelist (page 27) [pdf]”(Disclaimer: yWorks employee and developer here) We do have a more modern web-based graph editor: https://www.yworks.com/yed-live/ It may lack features you need, as the idea was a less cluttered and more modern UI, not to bring over everything and the kitchen sink. As far as yEd Desktop goes, Java becomes an increasingly unattractive platform for desktop development, with Swing showing varying degrees of brokenness…
Comment linking /yed-live/
on “Ask HN: A modern-looking UML diagram tool?”The automatic rearrangement feature based on predefined layouts is incredibly useful. I strongly encourage people interested in this software to also read their blog. https://www.yworks.com/blog/projects-optical-graph-recogniti...
Comment linking /blog/projects-optical-graph-recognition
on “Ask HN: A modern-looking UML diagram tool?”For all sorts of diagrams, this software is awesome: yEd https://www.yworks.com/products/yed Favorite feature: automatically reorganize the chart according to your preferences/constraints (e.g. fewer line intersections, hub-spoke, hierarchical, etc)
Comment linking /products/yed
on “Ask HN: A modern-looking UML diagram tool?”
