Abstract: A drawing apparatus that creates drawing data to be executed by a programmable display device connected to an external device includes a project-data creation unit, a project-data transfer unit, a diagnostic-information generation unit that generates diagnostic information, and an obtaining-information holding unit that holds therein error-obtaining information for obtaining error information. In the obtaining-information holding unit, the error-obtaining information about each of external devices that are connectable to the programmable display device is registered, when an external device, to be connected to the programmable display device, is selected from among the external devices, the diagnostic-information generation unit reads error-obtaining information about a selected external device, registered in the obtaining-information holding unit, and generates the diagnostic information by using the read error-obtaining information.