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May 30, 2024
Seeking Feedback

Implement proper integration with PlantUML Markup language

Related products:Lucidchart
  • May 30, 2024
  • 38 replies
  • 4383 views

One of the selling points of lucidchart for my organisation was the fact that one could use PlantUML Markup language we define diagrams which would allow use to keep all diagrams within lucidchart. The documentation mentions that and also talks about some of the options that can be used. However, after effectively trying to import a simple PlantUML into your tool, the result was not the expected.

Not only it doesn’t support the standards and some basic features, it also doesn’t support some of the features that you say that supports (i.e. “actor” entity) and even after trying to cleanup everything that is not supported, the diagram is simply unreadable.

UML is used for technical diagrams nad people that make them know what they are doing. Instead of trying to implement something from scratch 8which is what you were trying to do), you could simply implement/integrate fully with PlantUML, which is a known, stable and robust markup language to design and render diagrams.

PlanUML has free integration and the integration documentation is clear and simple to follow. You don’t need to make it “fancy” or allow to style component individually since that is not what tech people are looking for and PlantUML already supports it out of the box with several teams and styling.

The integration can be really simple to the point you just render the diagram itself or add a container into the page where the diagram is rendered. plantULM generates SVG diagrams which works well with the system you already have anyway.

Without this feature it will be very difficult to sell the usage of this tool for tech work since we will still need to use a different tool to manage PlantUML diagrams vs normal/standard diagrams, which seems to beat the purpose of your tool.

Hope this is really considered since it will be an HUGE selling point for tech teams.

Here some resources to make your life easier:


Happy to discuss this with someone on Lucidchart side.
 

Many thanks.

Pinned Reply By kellsworth

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts in this thread. I’m on the Product team here at Lucid and will be starting up some research soon around how people like to work with markup languages such as Plant UML and Mermaid and what an ideal experience would look like. If would be interested in a conversation, please respond in this thread, and I'll reach out with more information!

Comments

Brock Wood
Lucid product team
December 10, 2025

Hey Anton and Guitch, we’d love to meet with you to learn more about your requests. Shoot me an email at bwood@lucidchart.com if you’re interested in meeting!

December 11, 2025

Hi ​@Brock Wood ,

Unfortunately I’m on annual leave starting today and coming back January 4th. Will fllow up then. 

Merry Christmas!

Anton.

 

Brock Wood
Lucid product team
December 11, 2025

Sounds great Anton! Look forward to hearing from you then!

July 30, 2026

We have a lot of historic Plant UML documents and are looking to use Lucid as our integrated tool into Ardoq for our diagrams.
This is not possible without PlantUML.

Is this capability on a roadmap at all?  I have upvoted but have been away from Lucid for a bit so cant remember all the places to go look

any update would be appreciated.

Brock Wood
Lucid product team
July 31, 2026

Hey Oscar! I would love to meet to understand more about your use case. Email me at bwood@lucidchart.com and we can get something set up.

 

You may be able to use the UML markup feature in Lucid. Open a Lucidchart board, add the UML Sequence shape library and you should see the option to “Use Markup </>”

alison cheney
Lucid community team
August 3, 2026

@OscarMatzener I wanted to tag you in case you weren’t pinged from ​@Brock Wood’s reply! Brock would love to connect with you!

August 6, 2026

HI ​@Brock Wood 
We currently use plant.uml to define our systems diagrams, store in Git, and manage the version control etc, and allows for easy updating by editing text etc.

Mostly for C4 Architecture Diagrams

I tried the UML Markup option but that didn’t like the Plant uml we have.

I then tried the AI Diagramming and that understood it fairly well.

So I think it is working for us.

Thanks
Oscar

Brock Wood
Lucid product team
August 6, 2026

Glad to hear it ​@OscarMatzener!