any good recommendations for (free) flowchart software?

[manikyath]

me and my weird usecases again...

 

i'm looking for some flowchart type software (think visio, without the pricetag) for some VERY complex chartwork...

 

basicly i want to make a chart that contains a number of 'items' (think big square, in terms of shape..)

each 'item' has the following:

- An entry point (named point where a connection to other items connects to)

- One or more exit points (same as above, but the opposite end)

- a list of contents in the middle

- each entry point gets connected to one or more exit points, to create a top-to-bottom tree of sorts, connections may skip generations, but (should) never go back upwards.

- it should be REALLY catered towards editing and moving stuff around, since that's where my excel concept is really breaking down atm...

 

and all of this should be in a UI that doesnt go thermonuclear once things get complex..

 

i've tried lucidchart, but it REALLY doesnt like lists inside blocks, and moving or editing those together.

 

i'm down for using some creative solutions, anything that gets this pulled out of the excel sheet it is now, because doing this in excel is fingernails on a chalkboard.

[LAwLz]

Have you tried draw.io? I know you said you have tried Lucidchart and that's basically draw.io on steroids from what I can tell, but maybe draw.io will handle your lists a bit better than Lucid does.

[manikyath]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Have you tried draw.io? I know you said you have tried Lucidchart and that's basically draw.io on steroids from what I can tell, but maybe draw.io will handle your lists a bit better than Lucid does.

i did, it doesnt seem to have a way to nest things in each other, and have them stick to each other.

[MaterialWolf]

Are you doing it in Excel using cells (yuck) or shapes with text? The shapes are better to move around than the cells and function similarly to any other flowcharting software, though I could see it crashing if it gets too complex.

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, MaterialWolf said:

Are you doing it in Excel using cells (yuck) or shapes with text? The shapes are better to move around than the cells and function similarly to any other flowcharting software, though I could see it crashing if it gets too complex.

the thing is that just 'a shape' isnt sufficient, i need to have a complex layout of information inside each cell, that's where all the softwares i've tried come up short.

[Avocado Diaboli]

48 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the thing is that just 'a shape' isnt sufficient, i need to have a complex layout of information inside each cell, that's where all the softwares i've tried come up short.

Can you give an example of what exactly you're trying to achieve here? Because if typical flowchart software doesn't cut it, it just sounds like you're trying to achieve something with a flowchart that a flowchart is inherently not suited for. Also, regarding your previous comment about nesting elements, seems to work fine when I try to group them in draw.io and move them around: