Is there software that can help create flow charts, class diagrams etc to help software development planning.
Thanks
+2
A:
You can create all kinds of charts and diagrams with something like Microsoft Visio or the open-source Dia.
If you want to auto-generate things like this, take a look at using a UML-based tool. A list of some UML tools is available here.
bta
2010-09-14 00:40:20
Dia is great thanks!
Milo
2010-09-14 00:52:32
A:
We used Rational Rose in class to do that. It also does much more:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/developer/rose/
Tommy
2010-09-14 00:50:08
<personal-opinion>I wouldn't recommend a Rational product even to my archenemy (if I had an archenemy, that is). They are very clumsy and extraordinarily difficult to use.</personal-opinion>
James McNellis
2010-09-14 00:53:05
Don't forget expensive enough to make an angel cry. N times the price for 1/Nth the capability, like so many IBM products.
duffymo
2010-09-14 00:59:07
+1
A:
As a open-source fan and contributor, I tried Dia on Ubuntu, but it was way too clumsy for what I needed to do. One thing I wanted to do was get raster or vector snapshots of fairly complex multi-page diagrams and put them in a wiki page, and Dia really couldn't cope with that - the fonts went all wonky and so on.
If you try Dia and find it doesn't work for you, and you have access to a Mac, try OmniGraffle. It's pretty slick.
Bob Murphy
2010-09-14 01:08:15
I always found Dia too clumsy too, you spend more time drawing boxes and lines than you spend modelling your ideas.
Mark H
2010-09-14 03:04:17
A:
I use this Software Ideas Modeller, or rather, used to before everything was built into Visual Studio (Ultimate with the many plugins that are available for it).
Mark H
2010-09-14 02:58:27
+1
A:
I use Graphviz in conjunction with Doxygen. Search for both on Stack Overflow, there are lots of tips,such as this page.
In particular, as a highly-iterative developer, I really like that the diagrams I create with Graphviz are stored in a simple textual fashion and so can be included in version control and diff nicely.
There's a very nice iPad/iPhone version of Graphviz called Instaviz which allows you to exchange diagrams with your desktop machine and tweak them on the pad.
Andy Dent
2010-09-14 03:18:15