Welcome
Drawbridge is a network diagram editor. It exists to make network documentation quick enough to draw that it actually gets kept up to date: you place devices, drag cables between them, and the app takes care of the tidy orthogonal routing, the spacing and the styling.
This manual ships inside the app. It works offline, it describes the version you are running, and you can reach it any time with F1.
Your first diagram in five minutes
- Place a device. Click a shape in the left-hand palette — Firewall, Switch, Server — then click the canvas. Or drag the shape straight out of the palette. See Shapes.
- Name it. Double-click the device and type. Enter commits.
- Cable it. Hover a device and drag from one of the four handles on its sides onto another device. The connector routes itself around whatever is in the way. See Connectors.
- Say what the link is. With the connector selected, pick a Link type (IPsec, trunk, LAG, WAN, management, wireless, conduit, fieldbus) and a Speed in the inspector on the right. The type is the line style, the speed is the colour.
- Tidy it. Select several devices and use Align to line them up and space them evenly. Nothing needs hand-nudging.
- Ship it. Export ▾ gives you SVG, PNG, a PDF with a title block, a self-contained HTML viewer, a Visio file, or the image straight on your clipboard. See Exporting.
Everything is undoable with ⌘/Ctrl Z, and your work is snapshotted locally as you go — closing the window by accident does not lose anything.
How the app is laid out
- Toolbar (top) — the app name opens About; then the File group (New, Open, Save, Revisions, Blocks), Import and Export side by side because they are the two ways a drawing meets other tools, and the editing actions — undo, redo and Replace. The right-hand end is about what you are looking at rather than what you are changing: Layers, Align, the ★ quick-shapes menu, the eye for what the drawing shows, zoom, fit to window and isometric. A "More" (⋯) button appears when the window is too narrow for all of it, and the ☰ App menu (auto-save, this manual, light/dark, sharing) is always at the far right.
- Palette (left) — every shape, grouped into families, with a search box, the Add place… map picker, and the Connector tool.
- Canvas (centre) — the drawing surface. See The canvas.
- Inspector (right) — appears when something is selected, and shows only the controls that apply to it.
- Pages bar (bottom) — one tab per page, with add, rename, reorder and delete. Double-click a tab to rename it; that name is the page's name everywhere, including the suggested filename when you export it.
The ideas worth knowing up front
Routes are derived, not drawn. An Auto connector has no stored geometry: the router re-solves the whole page whenever anything moves. That is why cables shift when you move an unrelated device — and why you never have to clean up cabling by hand. If you want a path that never changes, set that connector to Direct or Custom.
Two channels on every link. The link type carries what the connection is (dash pattern and badge); the speed carries how fast (colour). They compose, and the Legend button builds a key from whatever the page actually uses.
Containers contain by geometry, groups by membership. A zone or rack carries whatever stands on it, however you move it. A group carries its members wherever they are. One object can be detached from a container it stands in, so it stays put while the container moves.
One good default over a setting. There is no styling panel. Tile fill, outline, fonts and spacing come from the design tokens so a large diagram stays calm and consistent; what you can set is what carries meaning — kind, label, colour, link type, speed.
Your files stay yours. Drawbridge reads and writes .drawio (and Visio .vsdx), locally. There is no account, no telemetry, and nothing is uploaded. See Settings, desktop and privacy.
Free to use, at home or at work. Use Drawbridge for anything, commercially, for as long as you like, without paying and without asking. Copy it, share it, run it on your own servers. The one thing the licence does not allow is using Drawbridge to build a product that competes with it. The full terms are on the licenses page, and the name and logo are trademarks — a fork is welcome, under its own name.
Where to go next
- The canvas — panning, zooming, selecting, pages, isometric view, layers.
- Keyboard shortcuts — the full list.
- Shapes and Connectors — the drawing model in detail.
- Files and templates and Exporting — getting work in and out.
- Working together — live peer-to-peer sessions (desktop app).
- Troubleshooting — when something looks wrong.