
Show HN: Fast, Easy System Diagrams - flamingcow
https://architype.io/
======
flamingcow
I spend lots of my time at a whiteboard diagramming current or proposed
systems. The whiteboard experience is less than ideal: my handwriting isn't
great, folks on the other side of a VC can't see, etc. Most diagramming
software is designed for careful human placement to get precise results. I
built Architype to let me take notes and play with system designs in real time
during a conversation, in a way that can be easily projected. It's designed to
be entirely client-side and fast, but still powerful enough to produce useful
diagrams for most purposes.

~~~
based2
[https://tomassetti.me/recognizing-hand-written-shapes-
progra...](https://tomassetti.me/recognizing-hand-written-shapes-
programmatically-find-the-key-points-of-a-rectangle/)

[https://azure.microsoft.com/fr-fr/blog/turn-your-
whiteboard-...](https://azure.microsoft.com/fr-fr/blog/turn-your-whiteboard-
sketches-to-working-code-in-seconds-with-sketch2code/)

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15263434/google-ai-
autodr...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15263434/google-ai-autodraw-
doodle-bot-drawing-image-recognition)

[https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/#](https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/#)

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dangom
Really cool stuff! I'm glad I didn't miss it. The keybindings really make
prototyping much faster, especially for keyboard-centric devs out there.

------
nullwarp
This is neat though I don't seem to be able to link more than 2 nodes
together.

~~~
flamingcow
Thanks for this and filing the github issue as well. I put together a tutorial
to walk through usage in more detail:
[https://github.com/firestuff/architype/blob/master/TUTORIAL....](https://github.com/firestuff/architype/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md)

~~~
stormy
In the linked example for the tutorial, I see there is a "gRPC" label for the
links inside the two region groups, however, I am not seeing that label show
up anywhere on the diagram. Is that expected behavior?

Other than that, very promising project and the vi keybindings are a nice
touch.

~~~
flamingcow
Bug fixed early today -- you may have a cached copy. Try shift-reload.

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sdeep27
Suggestion: it would be very useful to see some examples.

~~~
flamingcow
Thanks for the suggestion. I'd previously added the tutorial linked below, but
that clearly wasn't cutting it, so I've now added an example diagram for
first-time visitors. If you already visited, click on the top object (probably
the help text), press shift-D to delete all items, then refresh the page.

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contingencies
mscgen + graphviz

~~~
based2
or plantUML: [http://plantuml.com/en/sequence-
diagram](http://plantuml.com/en/sequence-diagram)

