Crow's foot notation for ER diagrams
Crow’s foot notation is used in entity relationship (ER) diagrams to show how data in different database tables relate to each other.

Diagram types and their use cases
Crow’s foot notation is used in entity relationship (ER) diagrams to show how data in different database tables relate to each other.

Most businesses use mind maps or spider mapping - slightly restricted tree-structured concept maps - for planning and ideation, especially in marketing and other customer service professions. However, concept maps are also useful for problem solving as well as learning and knowledge sharing across all teams and professions.

Technical diagrams are a form of documentation by themselves. But they are also used to supplement text in many other types of documents created by technical writers and documentation teams. While some teams may have graphics designers responsible for the diagramming, tech writers may be less familiar.
There are many shapes in the draw.io shape libraries that use more than one line or fill colour. These shapes are being updated so you can change each of the colours and style your diagram with more flexibility.

It’s been a rather chaotic summer for all of us here at draw.io. Because it’s a Thursday, to fit with the general craziness, here’s a holiday-themed puzzle using one of the less-oft-used shape libraries. This library contains a large number of easy-to-recognise skilfully crafted classical hand-tooled signs, perfectly sitting at the bottom of your shape collection.

UML package diagrams document the structure of grouped components in a system along with their dependencies, especially for multi-layered web and application architectures. Package diagrams fall in between the detailed class diagrams and the high-level more abstract profile diagrams and model diagrams.

Diagrams from text are oft faster for programmers to draw than to spend time manually styling and aligning the diagram elements. PlantUML support in draw.io is being phased out at the end of 2025, so here are some ways you can migrate your PlantUML diagrams to draw.io or rewrite them in Mermaid syntax.

Diagrams can convey a lot of information at a glance, but only if they follow the three C’s - for drawing technical diagrams that means concise, clear and consistent. As the diagram author, you are responsible for clarity and conciseness. For consistency however, draw.io has many tools to help you draw diagrams that are easier to read.
Over on the home lab, home networking and smart home subreddits, it has been fantastic to see diagrams of increasingly complex home computing and network setups being shared. Diagrams help home you understand the physical and logical connections between networked devices, and are useful for setting up security zones, upgrading hardware and debugging connection problems.

The new Network 2025 shape library in draw.io has extra styling options built in. When you enable the background colour, the shapes will have a bold long shadow. You can colour each part of these shapes individually - shape outline, shape fill colour (and neutral colour for internal details), background colour and gradient.

Profile diagrams are one of the newer UML diagram types, providing a broad overview of a system showing how the system can be implemented in different domains. Stereotypes and constraints indicate which sub-systems and components, languages and processes are modified in different use cases.

Open this example in draw.io
Communication diagrams (formerly collaboration diagrams) show the messages that are passed in a system as an action is taken or an event occurs, and in what order they are sent. As a simplified sequence diagram, these show the information sharing relationships more clearly between different elements of a system.

Timing diagrams are important for activities that need to be completed within a specific time frame. Such as the ringing of a doorbell after pressing a button, or a ticket gate opening after a ticket has been validated.

Interaction overview diagrams show a high-level overview of how components of the system interact with each other. General flowchart shapes show the interaction flow between activities, and sometimes entire sequence diagrams or activity diagrams are embedded for detailed documentation.

UML notation is one of the most popular technical diagramming standards defining a wide range of diagrams useful in many different industries and professions, not just software engineering. That many different technical diagrams can be daunting, so here is an overview of each of the different types of UML diagrams, who draws or reads them, and why they are useful.
In addition to updating the main AWS and Azure shape libraries in draw.io, several new networking and cloud shape libraries have been added, including shapes for Alibaba Cloud, Dynamics365 and OpenStack.

The new IBM Cloud shape library in draw.io (right) reflects IBM’s updated design language, and extends the existing IBM shape library (left) with a wide range of additional groups, connectors and infrastructure components.

The new Citrix shape library helps you to draw Citrix diagrams of complex infrastructures that are easier to read. The older 3D shapes are still available in the Citrix (legacy) shape library.

There are a wide range of UML diagramming tools available, as standalone applications, as online-only cloud software, and embedded in various content platforms. Some take text input to generate diagrams, and others are specialised to draw just one type of UML diagram.
Risk management and knowing the probabilities of a success are important in any business, but much more so when human lives are on the line. You can indicate risks in diagrams with different shapes, styles and colours, or by showing percentages, even if you are not using a probability tree to visualise your system or task.

You can use diagrams in many ways in retail, including to visualise customer shopping data, to plan customer journeys, to analyse and optimise your retail space, and to improve workflows for both customers and co-workers.

There are many terms for diagrams that show a series of steps and decisions - flowchart, process diagram, process map, workflow, and process model. While many sources claim large differences between these terms, in practice, they are used interchangeably.

BTP solution diagrams document your SAP Business Technology Platform architecture to show its services, environments, systems and interdependencies. Using the standard SAP icon set in your BTP solution diagram ensures that teams from various departments can understand your diagram immediately - from IT service managers and CTOs to SAP consultants and solution architects.

There are so many different notations used for technical diagramming that this is a hard question to answer. draw.io supports all your icon needs - there are shape libraries for a vast range of different technical diagrams, and you can extend the built-in libraries with your own shapes in a custom library if you need to.

Mermaid is a text-based syntax that you can use to describe a diagram, and automatically lay it out neatly on the diagram canvas. Enter your Mermaid diagram description in draw.io via Arrange > Insert > Mermaid in the draw.io menu or + > Mermaid from the toolbar. draw.io has updated to Mermaid version 10.9.1 to support the new ELK automatic layout.

When you contract an external company to create a website, a mobile app or a program interface, you need to provide clear requirements - user interface specifications and mock-ups, user flows and use cases, as well as data structures and note the various rules that must be followed. You could draw a set of technical diagrams for each context, or you could put it all into one diagram.
Part flowchart, mockup and data - documenting the requirements of a website
In draw.io, the wide range of shape libraries let you draw many kinds of technical diagrams. The large process engineering shape library (Proc. Eng.) helps you visualise manufacturing processes and production lines. This library also includes various ISO shapes should you need to diagram to specific standards.

Software and web applications have become more complex, interacting with many different systems, and using a wide range of services and libraries. Good documentation, with technical diagrams of many different types, is used as both a planning and design tool, and to post-document a running system in order to make it easier to maintain and extend after deployment.

Tree diagrams are used to show hierarchies, to categorise something or show decisions. They are commonly used in computer science for binary search trees, red-black trees, and more, and to show directory structures on computers or a website navigation structure. Tree diagrams are quick and easy to create in draw.io.
Technical diagrams are used throughout many different professions and industries, both for internal documentation and to help customers or provide training. Many of these fields have their own specific types of technical diagrams.

draw.io is not a spreadsheet program - there are no figures from which to draw charts and graphs automatically. But there are plenty of useful shapes in draw.io, so you can easily create attractive charts and graphs for presentations and infographics.
Diagrams for the medical industry are often described from the perspective of an organisation or hospital, but how can the most important people in medicine - the patients - use diagrams themselves to get better treatment outcomes?

Humans understand information faster and more easily in diagrams. This is why there are many visualisation tools, from simple sketching apps, to single-purpose diagramming tools and whiteboarding apps, through to technical drawing applications like draw.io and hyper-specialised CAD and architectural tools for precision drawings.
Salesforce diagrams let you visualise your system and solution architectures using a set of icons (shapes) recommended by Salesforce.

If you are learning a language, you need tools to help you make sense of the grammar. Especially when you come across sentences that are carefully constructed to be as confusing as possible. That’s where sentence trees come in handy.

Association classes in UML class diagrams ‘hang’ off the relationship between two other classes. Instead of leaving an unconnected end on your connector, add a waypoint shape between them and connect all three class shapes to the waypoint shape.

UML component diagrams are used to model the high-level software components and subsystems in service-oriented architectures and component-based development projects, and more importantly, define the interfaces between those components. As component diagrams provide a clear visual overview of a system, they are drawn early in a project as they are useful both to seek approval from stakeholders and to develop an implementation roadmap.

T-charts are a type of graphic organiser or concept map that helps you to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of anything. They can also be used to contrast two things of the same type, such as physical products, services, processes or data structures, business models, applications, situations, etc.

While the shape libraries in draw.io have a vast array of shapes for technical diagrams, there are relatively few illustrations for use in infographic diagrams. You can create your own illustration shapes easily using draw.io on a tablet. For example, all of the illustrations in this tidal pool infographic were drawn as freehand shapes in draw.io.

Data flow diagrams (DFDs) are common diagrams used in structured analyses and data modelling to document the data flows between entities, processes and data stores. For example, the following DFD documents the main data flows in a large language model that allows user queries such as ChatGPT.

There are many systems where you need to describe the different roles that interact with it, and what their responsibilities are. As they can be quite complex, diagrams help you to explain how it works to both customers and colleagues.

Concept maps are a broad category of diagrams that are useful for brainstorming with teams, learning and training, showing hierarchical information, planning events or product campaigns, and exploring solutions to problems. They are widely used throughout all industries, especially in medicine and education.

Explaining new technologies to a less technical audience, like management-level stakeholders, can be difficult. Our whitepaper explains feature flags DevOps in clear diagrams how feature flags work and how they could benefit your product.
Explaining feature flag DevOps with diagrams whitepaper (PDF version)
Diagrams are an effective way of teaching and learning because we all understand complex information more easily when it is visualised. Graphic organisers, mindmaps, timelines, cause and effect charts, Venn diagrams, flowcharts, scientific illustrations - all of these can created in draw.io.

draw.io will be available as an integration in the web-based GitLab Wiki editor on 22 March with the GitLab 15.10 release and product kickoff. When you add your diagram to a GitLab Wiki page while editing the source of that page, it will be saved as an SVG image containing the diagram code, and displayed in the page content.
Feature-based development and lean release cycles are becoming more common in online software services (SaaS products), where continuous development and continuous deployment are required. Feature flags give administrators and developers fine control over what features are available to which customer segments on release.

UML activity diagrams show the sequence of actions and the flow of control in a system or a process. You can model the behaviour of physical and digital systems, as well as business process flows with activity diagrams.
UML activity diagram template in draw.io
Using diagrams.net or draw.io together with scripts and data sources, you can create data-driven diagrams, with colours, shapes, text labels and even animations that change to reflect live data.

Documenting software costs developers time and becomes outdated quickly. A code-first diagramming approach - describing the diagram in code or text while programming - works well for entity models (SQL database code), and class descriptions using Mermaid syntax.

Industries and services need to plan for when an incident happens, both to provide good customer service and ensure the safety of all those affected. When responding quickly to an incident, diagrams are easier to read and put into action than paragraphs of text.

UML use case diagrams show all of the ways an end-user interacts with your systems, with all of its pre- and post-conditions, exceptions and alternate paths. These diagrams are used to establish your system requirements, whether that be a software system or an interaction with another person or team.

Systems modelling language (SysML), is an extension of UML that has been modified for systems engineering. While both can document software, information and processes, SysML diagrams also document the hardware, humans, physical components, and facilities in the system.

The concept of state diagrams or state machine graphs has been around since the mid 1900s, long before David Harel modified them into the form used today as part of the UML standard.

Marketing teams commonly use 5C situational analyses, simpler SWOT analyses, PEST and PESTLE analyses to examine and improve their products and services. By presenting the information visually, you won’t get bogged down in unnecessary details.

When you slice a 3D shape up and layer it in a diagram, you clearly visualise that a concept or process is broken up into smaller parts. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial to create your own infographic using shapes from the basic draw.io shape libraries.

Bioicons is a collection of free custom shape libraries containing open source icons for life science applications. The website lets you select one or more shape libraries, and open them in the draw.io editor on the web.
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Mindmaps are useful to quickly capture ideas, and are easy to draw in draw.io and our draw.io branded apps. But some people prefer to work from text lists when brainstorming. Drop a text list into the Mermaid import tool and draw.io will generate your mindmap for you - no need to fuss with connectors or layouts.

Venn diagrams are widely used in business, education and research to visualise commonalities and differences. Although, you have probably most often seen theme used in memes.
Open this Venn diagram in our diagram viewer
Sequence diagrams show the order of messages that are passed between elements of a system to complete a particular task or use case. The events that cross system boundaries are used by objects and people (actors) to complete their processes.

Have you been asked to create a chart, a diagram, or a graph? There is a lot of confusion around these overlapping terms, especially as they are most often used interchangeably. However, there are some minor differences in how they are used.
Represent the three-dimensional molecular shape of a chemical by drawing a structural or skeletal formula in draw.io with the two new connector shapes in the Arrows shape library - the solid wedge and the dashed wedge.
UML class diagrams are used to illustrate the structure of a computer program. They detail the types of data or attributes stored within each ‘class’, the methods (operations or functions) that each class provides, and the relationships between the classes.

You can create network diagrams from scratch in draw.io using shapes that match the platform you are using - AWS, GCP, Veeam, Azure, Cisco, IBM and many more. Both the draw.io AWS19 and GCP Icon shape libraries for network and cloud architectures have been updated recently.
Timelines, roadmap and milestone diagrams feature in a range of documentation - project development documents, infographics and presentations being some of the most common. There are many shapes and templates in draw.io and our draw.io branded apps that you can use to quickly draw an attractive diagram that you can embed in your presentation or documentation.

Flowcharts are one of the most used types of diagrams in all teams. But some process flows are circular or cyclical rather than a series of steps with a start and end. You can create circular flowcharts in the draw.io editor in a number of ways.

The barrier to anyone diagramming and whiteboarding with draw.io is lower compared to many other SaaS applications. From reviews and customer feedback, some of the things they like the most include:
Ishikawa diagrams, also called fishbone, herringbone or cause and effect diagrams, are used to analyse and identify the root causes of defects or negative events. As most problems have multiple causes, Ishikawa diagrams are a useful prompt to look at the many different contributing factors.

Steps in business processes and project documentation are easier to understand when visualised. As one of the most common families of diagrams, drawing flowcharts in Confluence lets you present complex information neatly and securely in your team and company knowledge base.
Many people prefer a minimal interface for diagramming, as there are fewer distractions. While online whiteboard applications often have a limited set of available tools, draw.io lets you use its advanced features in a less cluttered diagram editor theme.
The draw.io editor online at can use the Sketch editor theme which has an endless whiteboard-style canvas and simple toolbar. This theme is ideal to use as a collaborative online whiteboard with your remote team. The lack of page and grid lines, along with the simple toolbar, minimised panels and the default hand-drawn rough style for shape outlines, shading, connectors, and text labels feels like an informal physical whiteboard, much less intimidating than traditional diagramming apps.
Teams in different departments use many different methods to plan projects, but most of these plans are initially sketched on a whiteboard. Collaborate in real time and online with distributed team members, customers and stakeholders easily in the draw.io whiteboard-like editor theme throughout your project development process.
As a type of directed graph, dependency graphs visualise processes or situations where there are dependent components such as in decision making, scheduling, product development, IT or telecommunications infrastructure, supply and manufacturing chains, and more. They help you find the optimal order and identify critical paths or weak links that would constain your application, infrastructure or process.

Kanban boards show the breakdown of large projects into smaller tasks that you prioritise and track as they are completed. Collaborative projects benefit from a kanban board as it helps everyone visualise workflows, the state of the project, and the current workload.

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standardised diagramming system used to visualise business processes. BPMN diagrams are a form of flowchart, similar to UML activity diagrams. While it is typically used by business analysts and managers, its simple and understandable set of shapes and flows makes it a good choice to document processes for stakeholders in any department.

Entity relationship diagrams or ER models in software engineering show the structure of and relationships between database objects. They are used extensively in database modelling to plan new systems, and document existing systems for maintenance and updates.
Open this ER model in the draw.io editor
Flowcharts are one of the most common diagram types, showing all of the steps that must be followed to complete a process. Not many processes are limited to just one person or one team, which is why swimlane diagrams and cross-functional flowcharts are used - these show the flow of data or control across different groups.

User story diagrams are quite strongly related to UML use case diagrams, and both are used in an agile software development context. Both types of diagrams are used to explore and document customer requirements, they identify different groups of users and their goals, but they are used in different ways.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a set of standard symbols and diagram types, commonly used in data modelling, workflow visualisation, and system modelling. UML notation is the defacto industry standard in the fields of software development, IT infrastructure, business systems and other fields. Many languages, such as SysML, SoaML, and a number of architecture frameworks use and extend UML.

Draw your Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure with draw.io for free. You don’t need to register or sign-up, and you can store your diagrams in your favourite cloud storage platforms, like Google Drive, One Drive, and Dropbox.
You can use a versioned diagram in a GitHub README file in a number of different ways, and include links to edit the diagram or use it as a template for a new diagram.
The C4 modelling is used to describe and define architectures in an abstract and simple way. Designed by Simon Brown, C4 is a different way to approach modelling software development which focuses on four c’s: context (people), containers, components, and code.

Diagrams make coding go a lot smoother, especially when you are programming in teams. Having diagrams version tracked and right with the code they reference, and version tracked similarly in your code editor saves you time. You don’t have to exit your workspace to switch to an external tool, or have to export/import every time you want to update a diagram.
draw.io has a number of shape libraries and templates for creating rack diagrams. Both electronics cabinets can be visualised, as well as IT racks with servers and networking hardware, including those provided by specific vendors like APC, Cisco, Dell, F5, HP, IBM and Oracle.

All teams have their own unique needs and particular workflows. Integrating useful collaboration tools seamlessly into that workflow is the key to your team’s success. We offer security-first diagramming for teams working with Atlassian products.
Mermaid is a syntax similar to Markdown where you can use text to describe and automatically generate diagrams. With Mermaid’s Markdown-inspired syntax, you can generate flow charts, UML diagrams, pie charts, Gantt charts, and more.

Network diagrams, or infrastructure diagrams, let you understand a computer network quickly.

Org charts, also known as tree diagrams, organisational charts, and organigrams, are used throughout all disciplines and professions. We like to categorise everything as it helps us make sense of how the world works. Species of plants and animals, corporate and military hierarchies, team structures, family trees, language family relationships, even symptoms of illnesses - org charts help us quickly find who to contact, what illness to treat, and so on.
Floorplans aren’t only useful for real-estate agents and people who are moving to a new apartment. You can also plan new office spaces, show emergency routes, create a seating chart, plan a conference or trade show layout - anything where you need to arrange people and furniture in a space.

It’s easier to show new development team members your project’s branch structure in your Git repository visually than to describe it in words. Some platforms may illustrate this using built-in tools. If you are using a platform without a convenient visual representation, it’s easy to create your own gitflow diagram.

Threat modelling, especially in IT, is becoming more common. Companies are increasingly aware of the risks of having their infrastructure and devices connected to the internet. As more devices, machines, sensors, monitors, and applications are added to a company’s infrastructure, there are potentially many more vulnerabilities.

Cloudockit is a platform which connects to and monitors your cloud and on-premises environment and automatically generates 2D or 3D diagrams. It works with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), VMWare Hyper-V, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and your local infrastructure to visualise your network and automatically generate documentation.

Entity relationship diagrams show how data is structured in relational databases. Each entity consists of rows of attributes. ER diagrams are used in software development and by IT workers to design and document database structure.
Using Cloudcraft, you can securely connect to cloud environments and infrastructure components via your architecture diagrams where statistics, resource information and more is updated in real time. The 3D isometric view that Cloudcraft uses is familiar to engineers and IT staff as it often matches the tools they learned on. The automatic updates driven from your company’s live systems makes Cloudcraft a fantastic tool for monitoring your AWS cloud infrastructure. The statistics are also helpful to estimate costs when you want to make changes to your system.

Veaam is an online service that visualises and monitors your cloud and network architectures, and provides a number of additional availability services, including deployment, backup, replication and restoration. It supports Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud, as well as a variety of workloads, apps, and platforms commonly used by businesses.
