Way back in the day I worked for an engineering company, which should be defined as a company populated mostly by engineers; those quirky, logical, methodical creatures who take notes at meetings, and, at least way back then, did some of their thinking on a white board with markers.
Here in the 21st century we have digital tools to help us with diagrams, the white board now graces the Mac’s screen as an app, and diagramming is no longer a dark art. In fact, good diagramming tools for the Mac are inexpensive and easy to use.
If you’re thinking digital graph paper then you’ll be impressed by Graph Paper, the simple Mac app that lets you draw vector art– graphic, charts, diagrams, flow charts, org charts, process and procedural steps, and whatever– right on the Mac’s screen on… insert drum roll here… digital graph paper.
The digital graph paper page in Graph Paper can be almost any size, and whatever you create can be printed or exported multiple ways– as ASCII art, PDF, EPS, SVG. That makes it the perfectly inexpensive tool for diagrams, technical drawings, even code documentation.
Take a look.
Symbols can be converted to ASCII art which doubles as a graphic art utility for geeks, though such effort is somewhat time consuming and laborious.
The Graph Paper tools are simple to master. A floating palette displays available tools, and each one has more granular settings which can be adjusted in real time. Diagramming apps abound on the Mac, and Graph Paper is decent for what it does, but priced about the same as the more capable Flowchart Designer, but less than the popular Shapes.