I’ve used a Mac for quite a long time now. I used to need to diagram out database schematics and software charts, and recently I’ve gotten into business process charts. For a long time, the only tool I could find that was decent was Concept Draw. I’ve tried Omni Graffle, but found it sloppy. Concept Draw was easy to use, had the icons I wanted, and produced nice looking diagrams too. Unfortunately, it’s very expensive. Also, it ha sa major bug where sometimes when editing the text of an object, if I hit delete (backspace), it erases the whole canvas (the whole canvas actually disappears), and if I save it to save my changes, when I reopen it, the canvas is still gone. I.e. the bug is saved to the document, meaning I lose my work completely. This means that I can’t save my document when this bug occurs, and I lose the changes I’ve made since last save. It’s really annoying. Also, the program is huge, both in terms of resources and the size on the HDD.

Often I browse to look for a replacement. I’ve just discovered that X-Mind is now free. I spent about 30 minutes learning to use it, and learning to get it out of the mindset of “I only do mind maps” and have it producing nice looking flow charts. They actually look better than Concept Draw I think. Also, the relationships (connectors) between the objects (nodes) are much more flexible. The auto-routing is smarter, but when it fails, it’s very easy and intuitive to move the lines around. It uses curvey lines where appropriate too!