yEd showing a BPMN diagram (process flow) |
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| Developer(s) | yWorks GmbH |
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| Stable release | 3.8 / October 11, 2011 |
| Development status | Active |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Diagramming software |
| License | freeware |
| Website | www.yworks.com/yed |
yEd is a freely available, general-purpose diagramming software with a multi-document interface. It is a cross-platform application written in Java that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, or any platform that supports the JVM.
yEd can be used to draw different kinds of diagrams[1]: flowcharts, network diagrams, UML diagrams, BPMN diagrams, mind maps, organization charts, Entity Relationship diagrams, and many other. A palette provides access to a variety of symbols both specific to certain diagram types, like, e.g., UML class diagrams, or BPMN diagrams, but also general-purpose geometric shapes. It is possible to import custom representations for diagram elements in vector graphics format (SVG) or bitmap graphics format (PNG, JPG, etc.)
yEd loads and saves diagrams from/to GraphML, an XML-based format. The application can print diagrams including very large diagrams that span multiple pages.
The name "yEd" stems from the concatenation of the letter "y" and the abbreviation "Ed", from editor. yEd is pronounced similar to "Wyatt" (see External links).
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Diagrams can be automatically arranged[2] using different layout styles, mathematical algorithms used in graph drawing. Layout styles include e.g. force-based layout, hierarchical layout (for flowcharts, e.g.), orthogonal layout (for UML class diagrams), or tree layout (for organization charts).
yEd can import data in various formats to generate diagrams out of it. Import formats include the Microsoft Excel .xls format for spreadsheet data, the Gedcom format for genealogical data, and also arbitrary XML-based file formats, which are transformed by means of XSLT stylesheets. Predefined XSLT stylesheets provided by yEd can process the Apache Ant build script format used to define dependency information in software build processes and the OWL file format for the description of ontologies. Other XML-based data is processed in a generic way.
yEd can export diagrams to various formats, including bitmap-based graphics file formats, like, e.g., GIF, JPEG, PNG, EMF, and BMP, as well as vector graphics file formats like PDF, EPS, and SVG. Further output options include SWF (Shockwave Flash) file format and HTML image map generation where bitmap-based graphics files are embedded into an HTML page.
The structural information of a diagram can be exported to GML (Graph Modeling Language) format and TGF (Trivial Graph Format) format.
yEd is created by yWorks GmbH, a German software company.
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