Show HN: Vellum, the best diagram editor you'll ever use

(vellum.blueprintr.io)

23 points | by JoshJamesAnthon 2 days ago ago

15 comments

  • twentyshores a day ago ago

    This is pretty good for network diagrams as well, you should rightly be proud of it. Many companies still use Visio which rarely generates a good looking diagram (of course it's based on the user, but Visio makes it difficult to do so), or Lucid charts which is decent, but has some limitations. Yes, network engineers still need to manually draw network diagrams. I would suggest getting some Cisco and cloud stencils and marketing to that crowd as well.

    Even Linux kernel is getting ai assistance these days, nothing wrong with using Claude, as long as you put in restraints and structure.

    • JoshJamesAnthon a day ago ago

      It comes prepacked with Cisco stencils, cloud stencils and a bunch of others!

      Press 'S' to open the shape & icon library

  • thatguy89 18 hours ago ago

    I'm having trouble figuring out the line from "speed" to "quality" over Draw.io. Why would someone pay (https://blueprintr.io/#pricing) for this over Draw.io?

    • JoshJamesAnthon 18 hours ago ago

      They wouldn't! Diagramming is, and should be, free! Vellum is completely free, no restrictions whatsoever.

      The chargeable stuff is additional blueprintr functionality; such as AI features, enterprise authentication, live collaboration rooms, and links to 3rd party platforms.

  • lkleonk 20 hours ago ago

    Nice tool!

    Two small UI suggestions: 1. Add dark-mode styling to the scrollbar so it matches the rest of the interface. 2. Consider adding a Tutorial button that opens a short walkthrough. A few slides with text, or a small GIF with an explanation, would make the site easier to understand for first-time users. Keep in mind that many users will linger on the website only for a couple of seconds and don't have much patience. It's important to show fast how the website works.

  • everythingabili a day ago ago

    Lovely tool, but the UI and text are way too small. Makes it unusable. :-(

    • JoshJamesAnthon a day ago ago

      Hey! Thanks for the feedback. Out of interest did you test this on mobile, laptop or desktop? In any case I'll look into some additional accessibility settings

      • anentropic 17 hours ago ago

        I came to post the same - on desktop (Chrome, macOS), the initial "Welcome to Vellum" screen has tiny text

  • bsonmez19 16 hours ago ago

    Tried it out. Really like the clean design and how smooth it feels to use.

  • JoshJamesAnthon a day ago ago

    We are seeing quite a lot of traffic! Thank you :)

    If you would like to try out some of the AI features of Vellum, or Blueprintr in general, email me your username to josh@blueprintr.io and I will give you 2 months of Premium!

  • sajithdilshan a day ago ago

    looks interesting, but nowadays I hardly think anyone manually draws diagrams. Most of the time I generate plantUML or Mermaid diagrams via Claude

    • JoshJamesAnthon a day ago ago

      You'd be surprised! but yes I agree AI driven diagrams are becoming the norm, which is why we support it too.

      AI diagrams are handy for quickly understanding something, but, in my opinion, not good for real documentation, or for anything complex that has a lot of nodes (it gets messy quick).

  • elmopeto 2 days ago ago

    Looks interesting

  • JoshJamesAnthon 2 days ago ago

    Nonsense marketing page if that interests you: https://blueprintr.io/about/vellum