Software for drawing/designing software

Question

Hi all,

My question is rather simple and probably already answered, but I can't come up with a search term that gives me an answer. Anyway:

Is there software to design/draw the objects and their connections in a graphical way? I'm working on a project and i'm starting to loose track of all the little things. Is there a piece of software that can help to make a neat graphical representation of all the objects and functions and their relations?

Greetings,

Bas

Answer 1

You can use Visio to draw UML diagrams to keep track of such things, although it may be a big job to put together accurate documentation.

If you are using Visual Studio, you may want to look into the new features that 2008 and 2010 provide - I believe one of the newer versions allows you to automatically generate UML documents.

Answer 2

Microsoft Visio or the open-source Dia are two popular choices with facilities to create UML diagrams.

Answer 3

what you are looking for is called UML, its usefulness in an Agile environment is debateable, but it is what you are looking for.

Answer 4

Microsoft Visio is a great tool for this.

Answer 5

Any UML Modeling tool should do the trick...you could even use Microsoft Viseo in a pinch.

You're looking for a Class diagram.

Not sure what IDE you're using, but some versions of Visual Studio 2010 come with some UML tools built in. You're able to generate the model from code and vice versa.

Answer 6

You probably want to learn about UML:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language

Then you'll probably want to use software to create the diagrams. I recommend Posiedon (which has a community edition for free):

http://www.gentleware.com/

Answer 7

If you are programming anything support by Visual Studio take a look at the diagramming support. It allows you to diagram the classes and functions and I believe even generate the code from those visual designs (and maybe even keep the code in sync).

Answer 8

Omnigraffle for MAC

Answer 9

YeD