OmniGraffle Reviews & Product Details

Many people talk-up LucidCharts, but I have found that OmniGraffle produces cleaner and more presentation-worthy final products. There are a few other features about OG that cannot be beat:

— The ability to import outline files/lists, and have them be 'projected' as a tree of objects.

— Programmatic diagram creation. This is huge if you later want to re-edit what you've made programmatically.

— A community of stencil-designers, at https://www.graffletopia.com/

— Deep, deep, control of objects, at an Adobe-Illustrator-level Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It does not have an online site/feature, besides the free OmniSyncServer: https://manage.sync.omnigroup.com/

I'd really like a docs integration; so that I don't have to deal with Lucid for certain teamwork. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that the learning curve is relatively easy coming from Adobe Illustrator. Features like dragging and dropping files that link and update, robust inspector, ease of use are among the reasons I enjoy using it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I wish that the hot keys were not the exact opposite from Illustrator - they're so similar that I'm often hitting the wrong thing when switching back and forth. The page setup for dimensions is a little hard to get a hang of. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OmniGraffle is super easy to use and there's almost no learning curve. I was introduced to OmniGraffle when I worked with an interactive agency in SF. They were already using it, and I needed to learn how to generate wireframes. It was a no-brainer. I was able to learn by playing around. Easy intuitive navigation overall. Stencils are available for free online. Prefabricated UI elements are useful, and you can create your own sets and save them. I don't use it often, but you can add actions to objects like linking to a file or opening a URL. I love these options. Upgraded to the Professional version, which has more advanced features. Snap and alignment features are useful for a professional-looking layout. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When I have text in the group, I can't globally scale grouped objects because the text remains the same font size. When I need to design complicated graphics, I need to use Illustrator. Connecting lines between shapes are one of the most powerful features. It comes in so handy, but the magnet function becomes difficult to operate sometimes. It would be great to add an interaction feature. It can be a simple field button with a jump to XX page so when I export to PDF, each page can have a hotspot to link to another. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OmniGraffle has a very shallow learning curve. If you've used Visio, if you've used Adobe Illustrator ... even if you've only used PowerPoint, you can find your way around OmniGraffle in very little time. Click, drag, draw. Once you've established a few basic components, those can be recycled for other projects. The OmniGraffle community has been around for years, meaning the answers to common questions can be found with a quick Google search. Additionally, there are stencils and templates only a few clicks away. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The file structure is precarious. The format is a kind of compressed file, so sending a Graffle to another person can be tedious. Also, these files can grow and grow into an unmanageable size. You don't _need_ a powerful Mac to run OmniGraffle, but it certainly helps. Also, OmniGraffle is a wireframe resource, but not a prototyping tool. This is for 2-D, flat representation of ideas only. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Omnigraffle is still hands down the best tool for wireframing. While many IAs and UX professionals have been using Sketch, that's not the right tool for the job. Sketch is for prototypes—not wireframes. Here's what makes it superior:

1. LIBRARIES: You can save templates and UX elements you create to reuse (in your style) that are a simple drag and drop away. I don't know about you, but I hate recreating things like Contact forms, maps, social icons, etc. Having a vast library of your own work (and the work of others via the Graffletopia community) is a huge timesaver.

2. VARIABLES: The bottom of my wireframes, flows and sitemaps all include a copy block of the project title, canvas name, modification date, page number, etc. I type none of this. It;s auto-inserted and auto-updated by the software.

3. SHAPE MODIFICATIONS like Adobe Illustrator's Pathfinder tool. Sometime you really need the right shape of comment bubble or notched-arrow navigation state. Make as many as you want. Save them as custom shapes and they become part of the system for use whenever you need them.

4. SHARED LAYERS. Love these. Put your navigation on a shared layer and it will appear on all your new canvases within that document. I usually add an additional layer ABOVE the shared layer as an active state.

5. PRESENTATION MODE. Don't have an InVision account? Shame on you! But if you can't afford one, relax. You can make your wireframes clickable like a real website and in presentation mode, you can run through the site, full screen and each element you hover over will automatically highlight itself. In a pinch, I've done this many times and clients respond well to it. I use a thick bright outline that reminds them of the hover states they see in a certain usability testing tool we all know and love.

6. SELLING I.A.: Let's face it. Wireframes from tools like Balsamic look like a child did them. I know that's kind of the point, to keep the IA from looking too designed, but try explaining that to a client who is new to wireframes. You will have a migraine from explaining to them for the 18th time that no, the site won't look like this, and yes, the lines will be straight in dev. Omnigraffle wireframes just look better and they sell themselves to clients.

7. EXPORTING. Yes, if you are forced to export to Visio, or (shudder) open a Visio file, you can. I;ve done it many times and the scars have finally healed. You can export to PDF, BMP, EPS, PNG, HTML, JPG, PSD, SVG, TIFF, Visio XML, all three Omnigraffle doc types and OmniOutline.

8. GANTT CHARTS: Why would anyone use Omnigraffle to make a timeline when Office does this perfectly well? Simple. Ever look at a MS Project doc? Hideous and impossible to read when projected on a screen. I've recreated Gantt charts in OGP with beautiful colors, easier to read typeface choices and better spacing and guess what? Won more business, Not to get off on a soapbox, but don't make your audience strain to read something on the screen. If you start your slide with, "I know this is an eyesore but…" you've failed. Really. Omnigraffle solved that for me.

9. DRAG AND DROP INTO OTHER APPS: I regularly drag selections of charts, images and sitemaps, etc. directly from Omnigraffle and drop them into Keynote and Powerpoint slides. No problems. They scale beautifully and don't experience color shifts that sometimes occur with other apps.

10. INFOGRAPHICS. Sure, Canva.com is cool, but it can't REALLY create true infographics (yet). OGP can and they can look every bit as good as if they were done in Adobe Illustrator or Sketch. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There's little to dislike about Omnigraffle to be honest. Everything just works. My only complaints are these:

1. ACTIVE AND HOVER STATES: If we can have shared layers, we should be able to set active and hover states to objects and navigation.

2. DOCUMENT STYLES: While I can save and have access to thousands of pre-built page and app elements, it would be nice to set up document styles (colors, typefaces, logos) that are used throughout a document without assigning them manually to each element (or resorting to the paintbrush tool). Admittedly, this is a rare use case for me and probably others, but it has come up where I was given wireframe requirements (links must be this color, lines must be #ccc, all text in Helvetica Neue, etc.)

I have heard some folks in the industry complain that OGP doesn't export to HTML (not true, it does) and that the tools they use go straight to production files. They must work in tiny shops that only work in straight HTML. The agencies I have worked for and in my current company, the code is a combination of several coding languages and scripts that would render the basic HTML a prototyping tool creates useless. I feel this is a silly argument unless you only build in straight HTML, with no jQuery, no database involvement, no javascript, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Omnigraffle has been around a very long time as far as software goes. It's stable, usable, powerful, and backed by a stable company who won't disappear any time soon. It's like the swiss-army-knife of UX tools. It has a HUGE user-base, and lots of templates and stencils (both paid and free) available. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because it's like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, Omnigraffle doesn't really excel at any of its given feature sets. "Oh cool - an auto-reflow feature!" you think "Oh - that didn't reflow at all how I expected it to." I used to use Omnigraffle for all my wireframes, but large projects became cumbersome, unwieldy and difficult to maintain. The lack of cloneable smart objects/screens (and difficulty of work-arounds) eventually put me off. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Look, I'll just lay it out there: I've been using OmniGraffle for almost a decade, and it's an essential part of my work. Whether I'm laying out a house, whipping up a quick iOS wireframe, or diagramming complex workflows for a client, it's always nailed it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only downside is Omnigraffle's lack of support for iCloud sync between the MacOS and iOS versions of the software. It supports syncing, but only using a proprietary-but-free "OmniSync" service. It hasn't been a huge hassle, but it's the real frustration

Long term, it'd be great if it supported some of Visio's more complex features, like controlling shape properties based on metadata tags (mark a shape as 'optional' and it greys out, for example, rather than manually tweaking every shape's color schemes explicitly). Here's hoping. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I create mockups of changes to web applications as a part of the development process in my company. Sometimes these are entirely new features, but usually they are changes to existing user interfaces.

My typical work flow to grab a screenshot from our application. I place the screenshot on a background layer, then block out sections using the rectangle tool. I lock the background layers, then draw new UI elements on top of the background to illustrate the change I'd like to see in the application. The ability to share layers between canvases makes the work more efficient, I can combine multiple screenshots and grouped OmniGraffle elements to create a complete user flow through a feature.

The Stencil extensions are helpful. I downloaded a stencil of the Font-Awesome icons which make it easy for me to use them in the mockups. I have also made my own OmniGraffle 'Stencils' where I keep commonly used elements for reuse.

I like that you can include a linked photoshop file as an element in Omnigraffle, so I can do additional work on the screenshot background in Photoshop and see the changes applied to my mockup in Omnigraffle.

The exports are great. I often select a few of elements and export if I just need a detail from design. I might also you can export one canvas as a PNG to include in a spec, or the entire document as a multi page PDF that I send out for review. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The typography is a bit weak, and that has come up as a limit.

It is great that you can edit vector shapes, but it is often difficult to select the points, which can be frustrating if you are used to Illustrator or Sketch. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Omnigraffle is great for creating simple wireframes quickly and easily. The library and third-party support is excellent and varied as you would expect from a well established application such as this. It's a well polished piece of software with great ux design in itself. Many of the editing tools and controls have been well thought through. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I tend not to use Omnigraffle so much anymore but I think this is more a reflection of how ux design is going these days. Typically I move straight from pen and paper sketching to prototype creation and as such there's no need for Omnigraffle I'm afraid. On larger projects when we need to specify wireframes however, it's still the go-to tool of choice. I find the site mapping aspect of the product painful to use. The auto layout tools never seem to be any use to me and the sorts of documents I'm creating. I assume someone is finding them useful but they always seem to mess up any layouts I've tried to create. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Tons of downloadable stencil packs, robust community of users, high degree of customization, easy & quick alignment tools, ability to create user journey & sitemap documents. Extremely scalable; user can create high-level information architecture documents and low-fidelity wireframes, but enough font, color & style options to bring wireframes up to medium/high fidelity so that they're presentation-ready without needing to export to Sketch/Adobe. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Steep learning curve for first-time users; complex UI that's easy to get lost in, lack of ability to create symbols - user must copy and paste which makes it impossible to automatically update global elements on every canvas at once. Lack of out-of-the-box standardized screen sizes for specific devices. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.