a couple of Visio questions/frustrations...

[Leeoniya]

I have a need to make network diagrams, and i have tried a lot of software to that end. Many programs very useful features, but none have the connection rerouting capability of Visio, nor the XML output support which i plan to parse with php, to allow some manipulation through a web interface.

that said, the most lacking features for me are that you cannot attach text or data to connection points as per the Visio help file:

Add text next to a connection point:

Unfortunately, you can’t add text directly to a connection point. You can, however, add text to the shape and then move the text next to the connection point.

it's cool that you can specify a "net" label by double clicking on a connector line, but without being able to add things like IP addresses/hardware addresses, port designators, etc is a huge pain in the a**, and why on earth would such simplistic functionality be overlooked when they have several sections worth of Networking vss templates.

i would ideally like to make changes through a web interface to document config changes, but i am left with guessing which text label applies to what based on proximity?

any advice would be great, maybe a workaround like annotaions that can get attached to connection nodes or something?

regards,

Leon

Edited January 29, 2008 by Leeoniya