Migrations

Move your Visio diagram to Modudraft

Load a .vsdx file. Shapes become components, glued connectors become arrows, and the layout you drew is kept.

Export from Visio

In Visio, choose File, then Save As, and pick Visio Drawing (*.vsdx).

  • Older .vsd files are not read. Open them in Visio and save as .vsdx first.
  • Only the first page of the file is read (the first page file, usually the first tab). Save other pages as separate files.
  • Diagrams from tools that export Visio files, such as Lucidchart, load the same way.

Load it in Modudraft

Open a diagram, then Import in the toolbar, then Open a file…, and choose your .vsdx file. Files are limited to 5 MB. The extension has to be lower case.

If the diagram already has content on any tab, you are asked "Replace current diagram?" first. The import replaces every tab and can't be undone, so import into a new, empty diagram. Imports aren't possible on a view-only diagram.

What maps to what

  • Each shape on the page becomes a component, named from the shape's text.
  • The component type is guessed from words in the label, such as database, Redis, Kafka, nginx or S3. Visio's own shape types are not used. Everything else becomes a general service.
  • Each connector that is glued to a shape at both ends becomes an arrow, with its text as the label.
  • Positions are converted from the Visio page, so the layout looks like your drawing. If every shape sits at the same corner they are arranged left to right instead.

What is lost

  • A connector glued at only one end is skipped. A connector that isn't glued at all comes in as an empty component; delete it.
  • A group comes in as one component, named from the first text found in it; the shapes inside it are not imported separately. Containers and swimlanes do not become boundaries or levels.
  • Every top-level shape is imported, including title blocks, text boxes and background shapes, so delete the extras after the import.
  • Colours, stencil shapes and icons, line styles, shape data, hyperlinks, layers and every page after the first.

After the import

  • Tidy layout. Click Tidy layout in the left palette to arrange everything neatly. The Tidy direction is in the toolbar's Settings menu.
  • Add levels. Group related components into one component and open it to see what is inside. See Levels and C4.
  • Add boundaries. Drag Boundary from the palette around components that belong together, such as a network or a team.

With an agent (MCP)

The MCP server cannot read .vsdx files, and an agent can't read them with read_file either, because the file is a zip. Load it in the web app, or have the agent build the diagram with bulk_add_nodes and bulk_add_edges. Set up the MCP server first.