Create Visio-like diagrams with ease

Essential Diagram is an extensible, high-performance .NET diagramming framework for Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications. It can be used for developing Microsoft Visio-like interactive graphics and diagramming applications. It stores graphical objects in a node graph and renders those objects onto the screen. Essential Diagram supports both vector and raster graphics on the drawing surface.

Flexible Architecture

Essential Diagram is designed to be a high-performance, modular, easy-to-use and easy-to-customize engine. Many of the classes and components in the library can be sub-classed, providing users the ability to extend and customize the library to meet their needs.

• Export Options
• Model-View-Controller
• Style-and-Property Inheritance

• Labels
• Node Hosting Control
• Shapes
• Symbols
• Text Nodes

Node Linking

Essential Diagram comes with built-in shapes that let you link your diagram nodes and illustrate the work flow.

• End Point Decorator
• Line Routing and Line Bridging
• Link
• Port

Appearance

There are plenty of options for customizing the appearance of different portions of a diagram, letting you create professional-looking diagrams that reflect the style patterns commonly used in the business domain.

• Diagram Background
• Enable Shading
• Font Color Styles
• Layers
• Line Styles
• Node Fill Styles
• Selection Handle Styles
• Margin Support

User Interface Features

Essential Diagram comes with advanced user-interface features to provide end-users with a rich visualization experience. The user interface features highlighted in this section include Zoom and Pan, and Ruler.

• Ruler
• Wizard
• Zoom and Pan

Layout Management

The default implementation for all the common layout patterns is available in Essential Diagram. You can also customize existing layout techniques and implement new ones.

• Custom
• Directed Tree
• Hierarchic
• OrgChart Layout
• Radial Tree
• Symmetric
• Table Tree

Diagram Builder

Essential Diagram can be used to create a rich Visio-like diagram builder application. This framework provides many utility controls to help you put such an application together very easily.

• Document Explorer
• Layout Grid
• Pan and Zoom View
• Property Editor
• Serialization
• Undo Redo

Drawing Tools

There are several built-in drawing tools that let users add primitive shapes and lines to a diagram. This makes it easy to put together a rich diagram building environment.

• Bezier
• Closed Curve
• Curve
• Curve and Closed Curve
• Ellipse
• Ellipse and Polygon
• Image
• Line
• Line and Poly-Line
• Polygon
• Poly-Line
• Rectangle
• Rectangle and Rounded Rectangle
• Rich Text
• Rounded Rectangle
• Spline
• Spline and Bezier
• Text
• Text and Rich Text

Editing Tools

The comprehensive set of editing tools provided by Essential Diagram allows users to work interactively with the diagram control for diagram-building applications. Besides the built-in tools, custom tools can be defined and added to the diagram controller to provide custom functionalities.

• Align
• Layout
• Nudge
• Rotate
• Select
• Text Formatting
• View
• Z-Order

Custom Symbols

Essential Diagram ships with a Symbol Designer Utility, which facilitates the creation of custom symbols. These symbols can be organized in various categories for ease of use. Furthermore, symbols can also be imported in the form of Microsoft Visio stencil files (*.vss files), which can be converted into Essential Diagram symbol palettes. These symbol palettes can also be edited and customized according to the needs of the user.

• Symbol Designer Utility
• Symbol Palettes
• Visio Stencil Import

Scripting

Essential Diagram is integrated with the Essential Scripting Library to support diagram creation with scriptable interactivity. The framework also provides enhanced design-time support through a rich user interface for creating and editing scripts. The scripting feature allows end-users to define behaviors for diagram entities at run time using one of the supported scripting languages. The scripting languages currently supported are C#, Visual Basic .NET, and JScript .NET.

• Scripting Editor
• Scripting ToolBar