organization, workflow

[yac <yac blesmrt net>]

Hello fellow DIA-ers,

I'm running into some issues on managing my diagrams and creating a
comfortable workflow.
-   How do You do it?

Here is my context:

Project Complexity and organization
===================================

I'm working on project which has subprojects
*   HW part (stationary terminals)
*   SW master server (db, web access for management)
*   SW terminal part (comunicates with the HW and master server, has
it's own db)

The project is in early stage of planning, where we design actually 2
projects.
*   1st is our idea of how it should look like "done right" and generic
*   2nd is minimal viable product we can sell to our first client, so
it has stripped down some use cases.

So my .dia files are structured on FS by the projects they belong to.

generic/uml.dia
    *   belongs to main project.
    *   describes logic of stuff that is relevant to every subproject.
        Like state diagrams of removable HW parts attached on the
terminal. Component overview, etc.

generic/terminal/use_cases.dia
    *   Use Cases for the generic project.

client/terminal/use_cases.dia
    *   Use cases for the client we agreed on.

client/terminal/db.dia
client/master/db.dia

etc.

I'm not using this much DIA for long, so im continualy improving on the
workflow, but it doesnt feel really smooth like I work with source
files and git. I use Xmonad as wm, so I dont see window titles. My
windows layout looks like

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| main big window with diagram space                | second related |
|                                                   | diagram file   |
|                                                   |----------------|
|                                                   | layers         |
|                                                   |----------------|
|                                                   | toolbar        |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

and i'm generaly happy with it. Only I orientate which window is which
by looking at the layers window and examining the layers or Diagram:
<select_box>. But this is kind of confusing since the identical names
eg. for use_cases. When I need open more diagrams I just open another
dia on another workspace.

Im realizing now I havent structured everything properly in the
filesystem, so this issue may go away once I get a grip and mindset on
this structure (this is my first project this big that needs to design
carefully and Im managing/designing by myself) but anyway ...

... here are first Qs:
*   How do you organize diagrams in such a project?
*   What do i do ineffectively / How would you go about improving this
workflow?
*   How do I orientate in the files? Would enabling window title bars
help, is there other way? or will this go away once I get the grip?
*   Is it possible to have nested layers?

Backups and sharing
====================
Currently when I modify a file I just upload it to corresponding
redmine project to documents. Which is backed up and allows me to see
history as i upload new versions. The issue is when I get to something
after a few days i'm not sure if I uploaded or not, which checking for
is tedious. However, this can be solved just by getting discipline in
uploading at the end of every session but I'd rather not to just
because and also it happens I need to leave quickly or just added one
or two elements because I got a good idea at 2 AM.

I tried storing the files ungzipped in git for like a week but it's a
mess and grows quickly and diffs arent very helpfull. Storing them just
in binary would also grow quickly on frequent commits.

So, Qs:
*   How do you manage versioning, backuping and sharing?
*   Did you actually try using git for longer time? with what results?