# Useful Tools Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussion\ **Created:** [May 11, 2020, 4:52am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614 "2020-05-11T04:52:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![kpswiney](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kpswiney/32/5232_2.png) [@kpswiney](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/kpswiney)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2020, 4:52am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/1 "2020-05-11T04:52:39Z")
Hello everyone, I am wondering if anyone wants to share any tools/software/programs that you use alongside Ignition to aid in development. I discovered this program, Visidata, a few months back and it was essential in being able to sift through large sets of data. It uses regex and python to allow editing, filtering and creating new tables which I used for mass configuration changes. It requires Bash as it runs from the command line. I consider it very user friendly and extremely useful when needed. It is open source and the creator has a series of instructional videos on Youtube demonstrating its capabilities. > **[Open-source data multitool | VisiData](https://www.visidata.org/)** > > Command-line interactive multitool for tabular data. [![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/3X/6/e/6e208d5bdfa08b556501f8f9087f12305d107a2c.jpeg "VisiData Lightning Demo at PyCascades 2018") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1CBDTgGtOU) ---
**Author:** ![kpswiney](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kpswiney/32/5232_2.png) [@kpswiney](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/kpswiney)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 5:48pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/2 "2021-03-19T17:48:00Z")
This program can pull text from screenshots and PDFs. It is a front-end to another program, tesseract-ocr. [gImageReader](https://github.com/manisandro/gImageReader) [Tesseract-OCR](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract) ---
**Author:** ![JordanCClark](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/jordancclark/32/83362_2.png) [@JordanCClark](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/JordanCClark)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 6:00pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/3 "2021-03-19T18:00:12Z")
I’ll be honest, I forgot about this thread. [Notepad++](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/) to start my initial scripting. Even if I close the program without saving, it’s still there upon startup. Not that I ever NOT save… [Diagram Designer](http://meesoft.com/DiagramDesigner/) for flowcharts. [regex101.com](https://regex101.com/) to test regexes before inflicting them upon the rest of my code. It can also generate code snippets to play with for different languages. [labelary.com](http://labelary.com/) to set up labels for Zebra label printers. ---
**Author:** ![WillMT10](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@WillMT10](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/WillMT10)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/4 "2021-03-19T18:45:36Z")
Visidata looks cool, I’ll have to check that out. [Datagrip](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/) has paid for itself MANY times over for me. I tend to do a heavy amount of database work so probably not worth it if you are only doing light work with dbs. The git integration, separate “projects” with their own defined db connections, mounting of folders directly into the IDE, and code completion are the features I find most useful (but there are a TON of others that all lend themselves towards making database development much smoother). [Lucidchart](http://www.lucidchart.com) for diagramming - typically for db structures. I’m not in love with this tool but we use it for a lot of different things at our company. One nice feature is that you can use their Entity Relationships tool to import and auto build database diagrams (does have limitations though if you have more complex db structures with FKs, virtual columns, etc). ---
**Author:** ![tamerplc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d78d45/32.png) [@tamerplc](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/tamerplc)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 2:10pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/5 "2021-03-27T14:10:34Z")
[OPCExpert](https://opcexpert.com/) useful tools to troubleshooting OPC connection and very useful for OPCDA. [DrawIO](https://app.diagrams.net/) useful tools for drawing which has amazing shapes and can be converted to SVG and embedded in ignition. [Postman](https://www.postman.com/) useful tools to test APIs. [wireshark](https://www.wireshark.org/) is the world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer. It lets you see what’s happening on your network at a microscopic level . ---
**Author:** ![kpswiney](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kpswiney/32/5232_2.png) [@kpswiney](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/kpswiney)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 5:15pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/6 "2021-12-21T17:15:15Z")
Your control system needs a wiki. [Zim](https://zim-wiki.org/) is a wiki style note taking app that uses links and tags to constuct a web of information. Notes developed in ZIM can be exported as HTML and used to create a website. ---
**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 6:01pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/useful-tools-thread/34614/7 "2021-12-21T18:01:14Z")
> [@kpswiney](#): > > needs a wiki. Blegh. Not a fan of wikis.