On the Art of Network Diagrams and Presentation
March 4, 2009 by Greg Ferro · 20 Comments
Using Coloured Pencils
So you may remember the previous article Diagrams and Colour Pencils and how it can be used to make a fast field diagram that is useful to the people around the meeting table. Now I want to take this diagram and put into a format that I can include in my documentation and then put forward for approval.
The Value of Presentation
I like to take some time to make a diagram “look good”. Lets not get too carried away here and make like we are in the marketing department (actually, it’s not too difficult to make a diagram look better than a lot of marketing.
Step 1 — the basic diagram
So lets draw up the basic structure of the network design, so that we can see the shape of the network and get some feel for the layout of the system. In this drawing I will just use a single service line to start with:
Not so bad, but still looks.… boring
Step 2 — a little shadow
A little bit of drop shadow bring the elements of the page to life.
Step 3 — A background, a little graduated shading — Looks Three Dimensional
Many network diagrams look and feel two dimensional. When I look at the marketing brochures, they use a three-D feel to make them look different from “normal” network diagrams. Becuase they look ‘different’ that are often impressive.
So lets insert a rectangle, distort it slightly from the square so it looks a little bit 3-D. Add a little shading that starts dark at the bottom, then lightens towards the top to give it a feel of“moving away from you”.
Highlight Functionality
This is better, but I want to bring out the highlights about the layers of functionality here.
Pop some boxes across the tapered shape, then change their colours to something that suits your taste, and give them some transparency. The transparency will allow the shape underneath to be clearly seen and not lose the definition or meaning of the 3D shape.
I like this and things are going well but there are too many layers here. The picture looks a bit busy and means that it is losing focus. A bit more thought needed.
Remove some layers, and fill in the blanks
So I removed a couple of the layers, since I am focussing on the networking side (and nobody really cares about servers anymore), and changed the font to something a little bit nicer. I also touched up the colours to a better colour scheme. The previous colours were a bit dodgy.
Wrapup
So this is how I do / approach diagrams when I am consulting, writing white papers or internal documentation. I think a little time spent thinking about the layout is worthwhile. I would love the hear about how you do diagrams, or send me your diagrams for posting if you have something you would like to show off. I need more ideas on how to make diagrams work better.
A word of warning: mucking around with Visio or Omnigraffle can be a massive time waster. Don’t let it be an SSA.
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wow…my network diagrams never looked like this
nevertheless I would prefer configuring 10 devices that doing a diagram in Visio;
good job!
What tool did you use to draw the example diagrams? Is that omnigraffle?
For this post, I used OmniGraffle, but you can do the same things in Visio.
Visio is much more painful than Omnigraffle in my experience. It may be because I have some very basic experience with Adobe Illustrator and similar, but trying to use Visio can be very frustrating as it tries to be helpful in some very annoying ways sometimes.
I try not to to blame my tools or software. It’s not helpful in the long run. At least Visio is stable and consistent with other MS Office programs. Over the years I have gotten used to it.
OmniGraffle on the Mac is really much better and easier to use, that is for sure, but even V5.1 doesn’t have perfect import / export although its much better than V4. Maybe they are working on the Visio compatibility some more.
speaking of import/export — where did you get your icons from? can you share them?
Looks pretty, but does it do the job? There is not much information about the network, devices, addressing, etc. How do you solve readability when you add IP addresses, devicenames, link info, speeds, and other stuff.
I use layers in Visio a lot, to be able to turn on and off the needed information, typically one layer with port numbering, one with interface and subnet IP’s, one with device naming, and so on. Using layers this way I can have one drawing with all the info in once place. I also use one layer 1, one layer 2, and multiple layer 3 logical “views” of the network as different drawings with different layers, to cover all dimensions.
Doing this takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it for the customer and consultants as it makes troubleshooting and canges a lot easier and less risky.
I mention that this is mostly for presales / design / presentation, which I think implies not so much ‘hands on’. That sort of diagram needs to be somewhat different and has a lot of other information.
Maybe another post looking at technical documentation then.
Good stuff!
I would love to see a post on technical documentation. Through years of practice I am getting better at it, but it is always nice to compare to others and gain fresh ideas.
I posted some more on diagram and will probably do some more so keep checking the site and see what I get up to.
Diagramming stuff will be here http://etherealmind.com/category/network-diagrams/
>Don’t let it be an SSA.
What does SSA stand for?
ok, now I see it …
Good post
Do you know how do you distort the rectangle in Visio?… I can’t figure it out?
Sure, I wrote another post on how to do this http://etherealmind.com/2009/03/06/network-diagrams-drawing-the-background-shape/
can you write another post about how to do this use Visio?? so i can follow your guide by my vision…