Valence bond (VB) diagrams form a complete basis for model Hamiltonians that conserve total spin, S, and have one valence state, +p, per site. Hubbard and Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) models illustrate ionic problems, with zero, one, or two electrons in each 4 , while isotropic Heisenberg models illustrate spin problems, with only purely covalent V B diagrams. The difficulty of nonorthogonal V B diagrams is by-passed by exploiting the finite dimensionality of the complete basis and working with unsymmetric sparse matrices. We introduce efficient bit manipulations for generating, storing, and handling V B diagrams as integers and describe a new coordinate relaxation method for the ground and lowest excited states of unsymmetric sparse matrices. Antiferromagnetic spin-; Heisenberg rings and chains of N S 2 0 spins, or 2N spin functions, are solved in C, symmetry as illustrative examples. The lowest S = 1 and 0 excitations are related to domain walls, or spin solitons, and studied for alternations correiponding to polyacetylene. V B diagrams with arbitrary S and nonneighbor interactions are constructed for both spin and ionic problems, thus extending diagrammatic VB theory to other topologies.