yEd graphml palettes for network diagrams - My stencils to replace Visio with yEd
These are the yEd palette's (a.k.a. stencils) that I use for creating network diagrams.
It also contains all of the icon sets in SVG format that those palette's are made from.
My goal was to be able to replace Visio with yEd as my primary network diagram tool. These are the network and security icons that I required to reach my goal.
You do not need to download this entire repository in order to install these palette's in yEd.
You only need to download the palette or icons that you wish to use.
Each palette is a single file (ending in .graphml) which contains a group of icons from an icon set.
Each icon set is a directory containing a number of icon graphics in SVG format.
Choose which palette you wish to install and download that particular .graphml file.
To install the downloaded palette into yEd follow these simple steps:
- Click on
Edit - In the Edit drop down click on
Manage Palette... - In the Palette Manager click on
Import Section - Browse to the palette you downloaded and click
Open - You should now see it listed in both the Available and Displayed Palette Sections lists
- Close the Palette Manager
- Enjoy
Choose which icon you wish to install and download that particular .svg file.
To install the downloaded icon into yEd follow these simple steps:
- Click on
Edit - In the Edit drop down click on
Manage Palette... - In the Palette Manager select a section to import your icon into or click on
New Sectionto create a new one - In the Palette Manager click on
Import Symbols - Browse to the icon you downloaded and click
Open - Close the Palette Manager
- You should now see your icon in the palette section you chose to import it into
- Enjoy
Here are links to the palettes and icon sets available with a few examples of each.
| Palette | Icon Set | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title_Blocks.graphml | Title_Blocks |  |
Here are some more details about this project, why I started it, and how I got it to where it is today.
yEd graph editor is a powerful and free to use graph and diagram tool.
Unlike my current primary diagraming tool Visio, I can run yEd on my Linux boxes and my Windows boxes allowing me to work on my documents wherever I happen to be.
This was the primary motivation for me to create these icons sets. I needed these icons in my diagrams and I want to work on those diagrams from any of my platforms.
You can find more information and download the tool here: https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
yEd does not contain many network diagram symbols in its default palette (I think there are 12 total)
There are some other palette sets created by others that I have used. But they alone were insufficient for my needs.
Here are some links to these graphml pallette sets.
- https://github.com/pafnow/vrt-graphml-for-yed
- https://github.com/JustDerb/yed-aws-palettes
yEd has a built in palette manager that allows you to create new palettes and import symbols in SVG format.
Using this I was able to create the palettes I needed for network diagrams that you will find here.
- I have used the official Cisco.com site here https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/brand-center/network-topology-icons.html
- This requires conversion of EPS to SVG
- I used Inkscape for this
- These are the instructions I found on web that didn't work for me (maybe works on a different OS?)
- For one file
inkscape input-file.eps --export-plain-svg=output-file.svg - For multiple files
for %%f in (*.eps) do inkscape "%%f" --export-plain-svg="%%f.svg"
- For one file
- These are the commands I used on my Ubuntu 18 rig
- For one file
/usr/bin/inkscape input-file.eps --export-plain-svg=output-file.svg - For multiple files
for i in $( ls *.eps ); do /usr/bin/inkscape $i --export-plain-svg=$i.svg; done
- For one file
- These are the instructions I found on web that didn't work for me (maybe works on a different OS?)
- UPDATE: The Inkscape process above caused some issues with image scaling in yEd
- I have redone the Cisco icon conversions using Adobe Illustrator
- While this could not be done on the command line I was able to create an action group to run in batch mode
- The Adobe Illustrator automation actions can be defined under Windows->Actions
- More info on this process can be found here https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/automation-actions.html
- I have redone the Cisco icon conversions using Adobe Illustrator
- I have used some icons from the official Fortinet site here https://www.fortinet.com/resources/icon-library.html
- This set is provided as a powerpoint document which I extracted the icons from simply by renaming it .zip and opening the media folder
- The icons I chose to use from this set were in emf format (enhanced windows metafile)
- Using this awesome emf2svg tool I was able to convert them https://github.com/kakwa/libemf2svg
- This is the command I used to convert these files using this tool
for f in *.emf; do emf2svg-conv -i $f -o ${f%.emf}.svg -v; done
- This is the command I used to convert these files using this tool
- I started with a really nice ISO 7200 title block on wikimedia and modified it for use in yEd
- Here is the link to the image I started with https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Title_block_EN_ISO_7200.svg
- I used illustrator to remove the example text from the image then imported it into yEd and added all of the custom text label boxes in the appropriate places to allow for easy click editing text boxes
- While the ISO 7200 block is very nice, it is quite large. So, I cut it down into Medium and Small versions
- This was done in illustrator and modified in yEd as above.
- I also referenced the SVG icons from this project https://sourceforge.net/projects/nedi2graphml/
- I liked the color set they did and looked at what color codes they used for creating my own icon sets
To change the colors I used sed on the svg files which are just text files that can be manipulated.
To get a single color from the base images this required quite a few sed passes as the vendors used many color variations.
I started with converting to the color Orange1 which is a light orange so I could tell where I missed any of the original color.
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/036998/FFAA00/" $i; donefor i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/036897/FFAA00/" $i; donefor i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/02709F/FFAA00/" $i; donefor i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/007EBA/FFAA00/" $i; done- ...Many More
To make each color after that was a single sed pass.
- Aqua
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/008998/" $i; done - Black
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/000000/" $i; done - Blue
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/0065A2/" $i; done - Brown
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/7B2927/" $i; done - Cyan
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/00B38A/" $i; done - Green
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/B5BF00/" $i; done - Grey
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/707070/" $i; done - Orange2
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/FF5A00/" $i; done - Red
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/CC092F/" $i; done - Yellow
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/FED100/" $i; done
For White I first took any white and changed it to Black, then I converted to White
for i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/[fF][fF][fF][fF][fF][fF]/000000/" $i; donefor i in $( ls *.svg ); do sed -i "s/FFAA00/FFFFFF/" $i; done
I have used publicly available but NOT public domain icons here (only modifying colors or file names as needed). These icons are the property of the respective companies who created them (linked above) and their copyrights and EULAs still apply.