How to export a diagram to draw.io?

[rydrecri]

Hello,

We have numerous diagrams of our business processes, created using BPMN 2.0 in Sparx. However, we are facing a challenge: how can our business process owners update these diagrams using their own software, such as draw.io?

Thank you.

[Eve]

The general answer is that you look at the export and import formats supported by any two tools to find an intersecting format.

The most likely standard formats that Enterprise Architect supports that another BPMN 2.0 tool may support are BPMN 2.0 XML and XPDL 2.2. I don't know if draw.io supports any exchange format, or even creating a model instead of a diagram.

[Sunshine]

At present I don't believe that is possible unless someone writes plug-in to sparx thats exports and even imports for two way sync. Whilst you can save as SVG and import into drawio it won't be the same as creating BPMN diagrams in drawio so the user experience will be awful trying to move text, lines and shapes around from the svg import as they won't be the BPMN shapes and connectors.

Whilst Prolaborate allows some integration between Sparx EA and confluence which happens to use drawio I don't think the diagrams are anything other than graphics exported as an image. Thus not allowing editing with drawio.

A while ago we had the same problem with business using visio to draw BPMN process and that was partially solved by Visio importer for Sparx EA. However, that wasn't two way synch so continued updating in Visio just created more diagrams and objects in sparx ea when re-importing rather than updating.

One possible option that you may wish to investigate is the use of AI to translate BPMN exported from Sparx EA to drawio format. One of my colleagues was experimenting with Claude to do some similar translation from xml using xslt to mermaid format.

So unless someone creates an exporter from Sparx EA to draw IO you may have to resort to manually re-creating the diagrams in drawio. If you wanted to re-import them into back into Sparx EA you could save them as visio then import into Sparx EA using visio importer.

Hope that helps.

[Sunshine]

I asked Copilot

"I need to export BPMN diagrams from Sparx Enterprise Architect to drawio BPMN format and then re-import them. Can you suggest any AI tools that can help with that problem?"

and it gave this answer

Exporting BPMN diagrams from EA is usually done by saving out an XML file in a proprietary or semi-standard format. The challenge is then to transform that into a draw.io–compatible BPMN XML. Although there isn’t a single "one-click" AI tool to perform this end-to-end conversion, combining the strengths of these AI tools can help you:

Draft and iterate transformation code: Use Copilot, Codex/ChatGPT, or Tabnine to generate and refine your conversion scripts.

Debug and Optimize: Leverage CodeGuru and DeepCode to ensure your code is efficient and robust.

Visualize and validate XML structures: Utilize XMLSpy and BPMN.io to compare input/output, making sure all BPMN elements are correctly mapped.

Innovate with custom pipelines: If off-the-shelf tools don’t fully cover your needs, consider developing a custom AI conversion model using frameworks like TensorFlow.

This layered approach should empower you to build a reliable export–transform–import pipeline between Sparx Enterprise Architect and draw.io..

Would you like a deeper dive into one of these tools or even a sample transformation workflow diagram to illustrate how these components might interact?

I love how AI tools can do all this research in minutes.