Ilograph Blog

The only thing I've really found that works for me has been ilograph[1] that allows you to draw your diagram and then create different "views" into it depending on what the focus of the diagram is. Here's a wonderful demo of what it would look like converting some AWS architecture diagrams into ilograph ones[2]. I'm not affiliated with this project at all - I just really love it. [1] https://www.ilograph.com/ [2] https://blog.ilograph.com/posts/fixing-aws-architecture-diagrams-vod/

https://www.ilograph.com is great for this and more

Hi, author here. The app itself (Ilograph[0]) is fairly old; its first ShowHN was in 2019. These particular yt-dlp diagrams were an experiment in getting meaningful sequence diagrams from a code repo using Claude. If you open the black tab on the left, you can see the source of the diagrams. Claude was able to generate most of this, albeit with a good amount of back-and-forth to get the details right, plus some manual tweaking in the end. [0] https://www.ilograph.com

There's another HN discussion going, about declarative diagramming [0], from where I learned about Ilograph [1]. And which makes great use of animations for system documentation. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706792 [1] https://www.ilograph.com/features.html

"DLS-based diagramming tools like Terrastruct, mermaid, or graphviz definitely have their perks and are very well established for manual graph curation. But I found the lack of programmatic a bit of a pain point." Hi, creator of Ilograph[0] here. I agree with this if the DSL doesn't provide an IDE with autocomplete and instant-rendering (which I think applies to the technologies you mentioned). With auto-complete and instant-rendering, I think a DSL is much preferable to Python (the most common "diagrams-as-code" language). Python is a programming language for writing, well, programs. It feels like complete overkill for creating static diagrams. [0] https://www.ilograph.com

> But don't confuse the visualization with the system. I think this is where people have got it wrong in the past. This tool is an example of something in the right direction: https://www.ilograph.com/ It's just completely disconnected from code.

I'm a fan of https://www.ilograph.com/. I've only used it for a few small things, but the author has good samples, including a diagram of ilograph itself - https://app.ilograph.com/demo.ilograph.Ilograph/Request.

https://icepanel.io/ https://structurizr.com/ https://www.ilograph.com/

Couldn't help to share IloGraph (https://www.ilograph.com/) which features an ExportAPI (https://www.ilograph.com/export-api/) but it's rather expensive. Earlier today I also stumbled with Manim (https://www.manim.community/) which I think can be adapted to your needs. I hope you find them useful.

Not sure if this has anything to do with what you had in mind, but user veuxdo pointed me at it earlier today https://www.ilograph.com/ I found it interesting anyway. Everything from yaml, automated layout, drilldown, etc.

From the terms of service at: https://www.ilograph.com/terms_and_conditions.html >Communications >By creating an Account on our service, you agree to subscribe to newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information we may send. However, you may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send.

I think Ilograph[0] is what you are looking for, they even have this exact demo on their homepage. Not affiliated with them in any way. :) [0]: https://www.ilograph.com/ Edit: only after posting this I noticed the domain of the submission, I'm pretty sure it's them :-)

As others have said the C4 model is a great way to address a number of these issues. I can’t find the right video at the moment but Simon Brown (creator of C4) gives a great talk about creating his DSL, Structurizr, for C4, which he developed during COVID lockdown (if memory serves). There are many videos on YouTube of Simon talking about “C4 Models as Code” so I’m sure any one of those will suffice. The focus is on creating the model of your system architecture, from which the diagrams you extract are a specific projection of that model. Rather than a diagram be the main artifact. It’s a simple but very powerful concept that I’m always surprised isn’t more widely used. Structurizr models can also be exported to display as ilograph diagrams, mermaid diagrams and more. Also very much worth a mention is icepanel, a lovely tool for architectural model that implements the C4 model heavily. I saw Simon talk at a conference in Sydney about 10-15 years ago and heard about C4 for the first time in that talk, it’s been one of the most influential talks I’ve been to in my career as it made a lot of fuzzy things in my head all start to come together in a way that just made sense. https://c4model.com/ https://structurizr.com/ https://www.ilograph.com/ https://mermaid.js.org/ https://icepanel.io/

Very cool, thank you! Creating diagrams using code rather than using drag-and-drop tools might be a good idea for more complex architectures as described here: https://www.ilograph.com/blog/posts/its-time-to-drop-drag-and-drop-dia… - Can check the textual description of the diagram into version control and track how it changes over time - Can easily diff 2 versions of the same diagram - Adding elements to a large existing diagram using WYSIWYG tools can be tricky (eg: you may have to move or reroute existing elements to make enough space) Another cool idea is to create multiperspective diagrams with different views for different purposes (eg: code structure, deployment, network architecture, security): - Clarity. By breaking up diagrams into perspectives, diagram authors can bring much more clarity to a system. Individual concerns can be spread out over many perspectives, allowing each the space it needs without interfering with others. - Extensibility. Multiperspective diagrams share a model, so creating additional perspectives from an existing diagram is incredibly easy, far easier than starting from scratch each time. - Maintainability. A corollary to the above, individual perspectives can be modified without affecting the others. Diagrams that are easy to maintain get maintained, while diagrams that aren’t fall out of date quickly. Multiperspective diagrams greatly help in the fight to keep documentation up-to-date. This is a cool demo:…

https://ilograph.com appears to go nowhere

ilograph [0] has these features. I think it should be possible with SVG only. The main use-case would be for documentation sites. [0] https://www.ilograph.com/features.html

Thanks for adding GCP iconset[0] Will wait examples of GCP infrastructure. [0] https://www.ilograph.com/docs/iconlist.txt