1/2
I've been a fan of Visio since the Visio Technical days before Microsoft purchased and neglected it.
I've used it for things like accurately drawing home renovations, yard designs, and extensive factory layout designs (for nearly my entire career).
So I've been looking to export all my old projects for quite some time. Normally this means I try to export to AutoCAD from within Visio, or export to another format like svg.
2/2
So recently I was pleased (and a bit surprised) to find that LibreOffice Draw opens Visio files NATIVELY! Are you kidding me?
Everything seems to look identical. Objects are joined that should, colours are fairly faithful.
What a great feature! And it's not exactly promoted very well, so that is why I am writing this.
I'll post a few screenshots comparing a document in Visio to a document in LibreOffice Draw in the next day or two.
Give it a try!
Followup comment:
Visio files will open directly in Draw, but once the Visio file is edited, it will have to be saved as an ODG file to retain those edits.
But still, that I guess is kind of expected. And the ODG file is an open standard that will live on.
Also, to have an accurate scale when opening a Visio file in Draw ...
Scale does not transfer over. But its very easy to add.
Visio creates a scale like...
0.125 = 1 Ft.
When opening the Visio file in Draw, just setup the scale in Draw to be...
1 = 96
Both examples above represent the same scale.
@adventure_tense reminds me that at my work, I had created a number of diagrams in Visio but then lost access to a licence (re-allocated to others) so could not longer edit.
For a time I also had access to OpenOffice on a Linux VM but don't recall it being able to use Visio files, and eventually lost that access anyway.
For a time, the IE web browser had a Visio reading plugin, but that's long gone too.
Now all I have are the PDF "prints" of them (files can't leave the work environment).
My oldest drawings are probably still at my first job after college. Probably dating back to around 1998 maybe.
I could have probably taken them with me had I known that I would be still playing with them 25+ years later.
It's just awesome to me that they can still be preserved. I can't say enough great things about LibreOffice.
AdventureTense
geraldew
BITNACHT