What is Visio® and how can you view Visio® drawings on Mac?
Visio® is a widely used diagramming software, designed by Microsoft Inc. If you google “Visio® Viewers for Mac” you will find a variety of Visio® alternatives. The most popular of them are:
-
- LucidChart
- Concept Draw Pro
- SmartDraw
- VSDX Annotator
- Nektony VSD Viewer
- Cisdem DocumentReader
LucidChart, Concept Draw and Smartdraw are vector graphic applications that additionally support the viewing and editing of Visio® files, while VSDX Annotator, VSD Viewer and Document Reader are especially designed to view Visio® drawings. We have tried out each Visio® Viewer and prepared visual results, so you can quickly see how each of the above apps copes with its task.
As the basis of our survey, we took a VSD file, “Apartment design,” created in MS Visio®. The file includes Shape Data, Hyperlinks and Layers.
If someone emailed you a file in VSD, VSDX or VDX extension and you don’t know how to open it on macOS, this article is for you. If you already have a Visio® viewer for Mac but Visio® drawings are displayed incorrectly or incompletely, the text below will interest you, too.
What is the best Visio Alternative for Mac?
Take a look at the results of opening the VSD file in different Mac Visio® Viewers. We explore the pros and cons of each Visio® equivalent for Mac.
LucidChart
Price – from $4.95 to $20 per month (free for a limited number of Visio® documents)
Results:
– Shape Data, Hyperlinks or Layers are not supported
– No text is displayed
– Image mapping errors appear
Concept Draw Pro
Price – $199 one-time payment
Results:
– Shape Data, Hyperlinks or Layers are not supported
+ Image mapping is correct
+ Text is displayed
*Note: Concept Draw Pro supports VDX files only. We had to re-save our VSD file to open it in the application. This is inconvenient if you work mostly with VSD files. Read in our previous article which extensions each Visio® alternative supports.
SmartDraw
Price – $12.95 per month
Results:
– Neither Shape Data nor Layers is supported
– Insignificant image mapping errors appear
+ Hyperlinks are supported
VSD Viewer by Nektony
Price – $14.99 one-time payment
Results:
+ Shape Data, Hyperlinks and Layers are supported
+ Image mapping is correct
+ Text is displayed
VSDX Annotator*
Price – $24.99 one-time payment
Results:
+ Shape Data, Hyperlinks and Layers are supported
+ Image mapping is correct
+ Text is displayed
* VSDX Annotator is a pro-version of VSD Viewer. It provides additional features, notably, the possibility of annotating Visio® files and saving VSDX files in the same extension for further editing in MS Visio®.
Cisdem DocumentReader
Price – $14.99 one-time payment
Results:
– Shape Data, Hyperlinks or Layers are not supported
– No text is displayed
– Image mapping errors appear
We have shown how various Visio® Viewers render drawings and display visual images. For a clear overview, we have prepared a short table of the results.
Comparison Chart of Visio Alternatives for Mac
(Application of Various Visio® Viewers to VSD File “Apartment Design”)
| Shape Data | Hyperlinks | Layers | Text Displaying | Correct Image Mapping | Annual Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LucidChart | – | – | – | – | – | from $59.40 |
| Concept Draw Pro | – | – | – | + | + | $199.00 |
| SmartDraw | – | + | – | – | – | $155.40 |
| VSDX Annotator | + | + | + | + | + | $24.99 |
| Nektony VSD Viewer | + | + | + | + | + | $14.99 |
| Cisdem Document Reader | – | – | – | – | – | $14.99 |
