[Gee4orce]

I'm looking for a general purpose drawing application - you know, something like Adboe Illustrator, only without the cost and bloat. Looking at iDraw, which is very nice, but limited, I realised that I already have a great application that almost fits my needs - OmniGraffle.

If OG added the following features it would be perfect:

* a general purpose line/curve tool
* ability to break down and edit the default shapes, including text characters.
* some more methods of distorting these shapes
* a more powerful gradient tool

Wouldn't it me a good move for Omni to make OG more general purpose ? I mean, there must be more of a demand for drawing apps than there are for specialist charting/graphing apps ?

[foamy]

I couldn't agree more.

I regularly use Canvas or Illustrator to make figures for scientific manuscripts, presentations, etc. and both of these are massive overkill for my needs. I tried Omnigraffle 2.x and it wasn't up to the task, but I haven't tried 3.0.

All of your suggestions would be beneficial to me as that's what I use....lines, curves, arrows, gradients, etc.

An added bonus for me would be a really good export option for Keynote or PPT (ugh), or a basic, full-screen slide show built in to Graffle.

[Zarafa]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
I'm looking for a general purpose drawing application - you know, something like Adboe Illustrator, only without the cost and bloat. Looking at iDraw, which is very nice, but limited, I realised that I already have a great application that almost fits my needs - OmniGraffle.

If OG added the following features it would be perfect:

* a general purpose line/curve tool
* ability to break down and edit the default shapes, including text characters.
* some more methods of distorting these shapes
* a more powerful gradient tool

Wouldn't it me a good move for Omni to make OG more general purpose ? I mean, there must be more of a demand for drawing apps than there are for specialist charting/graphing apps ?

You might try Stone Design's Create. Nice app, currently $149, and Andrew Stone has a loooonnnggg history of supporting NeXT/Apple technologies. Plus, free upgrades forever is a nice policy...

[JKT]

Originally posted by foamy:
I couldn't agree more.

I regularly use Canvas or Illustrator to make figures for scientific manuscripts, presentations, etc. and both of these are massive overkill for my needs. I tried Omnigraffle 2.x and it wasn't up to the task, but I haven't tried 3.0.

All of your suggestions would be beneficial to me as that's what I use....lines, curves, arrows, gradients, etc.

An added bonus for me would be a really good export option for Keynote or PPT (ugh), or a basic, full-screen slide show built in to Graffle.

Evidently, you need to try out OG 3 Pro. The fills etc options are greatly improved (e.g. two-tone gradients, various patterns, improved arrow head selection and variable size of arrows, better line selection such as dashed, dotted etc), and it offers a basic full-screen slideshow. Download it and apply for a free one-day licence to give it a test run - I find it makes an excellent Canvas replacement for scientific diagrams.

Read more here

As for the original post - yes it would be very nice, however, I doubt it would be a trivial task to make it the equivalent of Illustrator (thinking brushes here). I do know that a bezier line tool is an oft requested feature, but you can pretty much get away with using the current line tool if you add lots of additional points to a line and manipulate those.

I fear though, that making OG more like Illustrator would ultimately lead to it having an Illustrator like price tag!

[JKT]

You just inspired me to take another look at the fills options again and I discovered something new that I hadn't previously realised you could do - you can actually combine pattern and gradient fills:



Freaking awesome!

[Michaelm8000]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
I'm looking for a general purpose drawing application - you know, something like Adboe Illustrator, only without the cost and bloat. Looking at iDraw, which is very nice, but limited, I realised that I already have a great application that almost fits my needs - OmniGraffle.

If OG added the following features it would be perfect:

* a general purpose line/curve tool
* ability to break down and edit the default shapes, including text characters.
* some more methods of distorting these shapes
* a more powerful gradient tool

Wouldn't it me a good move for Omni to make OG more general purpose ? I mean, there must be more of a demand for drawing apps than there are for specialist charting/graphing apps ?

Most of those things you will probably see in OmniGraffle 4.0.

[gregomni]

Originally posted by Michaelm8000:
Most of those things you will probably see in OmniGraffle 4.0.

Yeah, the hard part is really thinking about how to get the user experience when adding a bunch of features to do manipulations on individual graphics. Adding things like arcs/bezier tools, skews, text-as-shapes, etc is going to add a whole additional level of controls at the individual line/arc segment level.

We also have just as many requests to add more page layout oriented features like master canvases, text flow between boxes, etc. This is sort of another level of controls at a higher level than we currently operate at, whereas the vector drawing tools would be at a lower level than we currently operate at.

OG 3.x already has an abundance of controls and inspectors, so I think it will require a lot of thought about the right way to go about making the additions while still being easy to use as a simple diagramming tool as well.

I.e. the individual features mentioned aren't all that tough, it is making them approachable and accessible without them getting in the way or making the interface overly complicated and confusing that is the challenge.

[BZ]

First of all... let me say that as much as I love OmniWeb (which I do)... NOTHING compares to OmniGraffle when it comes to award winning features.

Every time I use OG and I think "I wish it could.." I find it... from layers to canvas size, from drag and drop to amazing selection tools, OmniGraffle has it all.

As for drawing, well, I have really started to depend on it for Website design and while I was doing that, I tried to create some simple logos as well, they both came out great.

I don't know what direction OmniGroup is taking OG, but here are some things that could help it get to a great place in graphics:

1) Optimization support for exporting (gif/jpg). Right now I have to save as PDF, open in ImageReady.. etc.

2) Individual element grouping and/or export. So I can draw a little picture and export just that.

Really though, it is hard for me to think of things that it is missing. It is just THAT good.

BZ

[gregomni]

Originally posted by BZ:
2) Individual element grouping and/or export. So I can draw a little picture and export just that.

On the export panel, choose "Current Selection" under "Export Area". I think that will do what you want, if I'm understanding you right. :-)

- Greg

[BZ]

See? Just what I meant... every time I think something can't be done... BANG it is already there.

Thanks Greg.. (NOW PUT UP THAT OW5SP!)

BZ

Originally posted by gregomni:
On the export panel, choose "Current Selection" under "Export Area". I think that will do what you want, if I'm understanding you right. :-)

- Greg

[Amorya]

I used OG 2 as a DTP app last year. Did a 30 A3 pages folio for a design tech project all in OmniGraffle. It worked great! Reason I used it was because AppleWorks tended to print my photos at 72dpi... but Graffle seemed to have all the features I needed

Amorya

[Sharky K.]

Originally posted by JKT:
You just inspired me to take another look at the fills options again and I discovered something new that I hadn't previously realised you could do - you can actually combine pattern and gradient fills:



Freaking awesome!

I think you run 10.3 beta

[gregomni]

Originally posted by Sharky K.:
I think you run 10.3 beta

Nope, that works on Jaguar, using OmniGraffle Pro 3.0. You need Pro because the standard version doesn't include the pattern color picker.

[nickm]

I designed a wedding program in Omnigraffle. It went very well, though the program didn't require any text flow between boxes.

I think the only thing I really feel is missing for my drawing needs is elliptic arcs and arbitrary shapes. I guess I'd also like some way to create a Bezier curve without moving control points, say with a pen tablet.

[voyageur]

So after reading all these posts, I'm convinced I should try OmniGraffle for scientific figure-making (as at least two posters are already doing). Can you export your figs in some standard (read: journal-friendly) format, like TIFF or EPS?

Could it be that in OmniGraffle we've found a replacement for the venerable MacDraw Pro??

[nickm]

Yes, you can do TIFF and EPS, but you should get your journals to accept PDF. And you can use PDFLatex too while you're at it.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Sharky K.:
I think you run 10.3 beta

Hehehe, I wish I did

But, as has been pointed out, this is just OG 3.0 Pro on Jaguar. If anyone has any doubts about whether an upgrade from v. 2.0 to v. 3.0 is worth the money, the number of additional features you gain is phenomenal.

To voyageur - yep, export is easy to do and you can choose the format, resolution, transparency, border etc. that you want at the point of export.

[Zoom]

I downloaded OG 3.x and am trying it out on my G4 Sawtooth (upgraded to 900 MHz and 768MB of RAM). It's a little sluggish in general, but every once in a while I do some action that causes OG to hang (CPU spikes, memory spikes). What gives?

I'm trying to lay out my work shop. The canvas size is about 150x200 inches (I would hope that wouldn't matter). The first time it hung, I was trying to group two large rectangles (to mark the floor shape). The second time I tried to put text on my work bench.

WTF?

[thePurpleGiant]

Can't say I can help with that Zoom Every now and then I find OG a little slow, well not slow, just not always as snappy as it could be, but it has never crashed on me, ever.