What tools do you use to speed up documenting application design. Namely, creating wireframes, flowcharts. What other methods do you find essential .
Is the general consensus that use cases are vital, or is a good functional spec document easier and quicker
ArgoUML has been my friend for many years when it comes to drawing UML. ArgoUML is a tool and you're asking about both tools and the processes used (i.e. "which artifacts do you create with the tools). We generally stick to user stories (agile project) and do not make "classical" use cases and use case documents.
I use Balsamiq Mockups for UI design and Visual Paradigm Aigilian for modelling - it allows to nicely go from high-level business processes to granular requirements and UML modelling... And it's quite cheap.
Paper and pencil, and whiteboard and dry erase marker. Later I transfer it to Visio once I've worked out the major problems. Unfortunately it doesn't meet your requirement of free, sorry.
I use a four-section whiteboard with embedded printer. That way, I can both do design privately at my desk or in a group of peers, and it lets me print out my ramblings for later on.
I've never found an application that gives me all those capabilities (although a 6 foot by 4 foot monitor would be neat, I don't think my employer will pony up the cash for it).
Sometimes the best technological solution is no technology at all (although I will be checking out the other answers to see if the tools have improved since the last time I looked - I'm pretty cynical however so I approach it with a certain pessimism).
Gliffy (wireframing, flowcharting) has a free basic version but all documents produced this way are public, therefore not very usable I guess.
OpenOffice.org's "Draw" does a decent job for creating flowcharts and similar diagrams, as long as you don't expect it to know (and enforce) the syntax and semantics of a given diagram type.
I usually find myself using MS Excel for drawing flowcharts rather than Visio because of its ease of use, and the juxtaposition of spreadsheet calculations with the flowchart itself. I write the pseudocode right next to the flowchart in MS Excel, and that makes reviewing much easier.
The pencil add-on for Firefox is pretty good for simple diagrams and GUI sketches.
And if you don't like it as a FF add-on, you can download a standalone version for Linux or windows.
dia, graphviz (dot), pen and paper, and my own mind.
All of these are free as in speech. Dia and graphviz are also free as in beer.
Mostly Dia (http://projects.gnome.org/dia/), whiteboard and for quick "drawings" pen and paper.
By the way, anyone knows a good tool for "paper prototyping"?
Sparx EA is big bang for the buck. Multi language support with roundtripping and team support. Been using it for three years without complaint.
I've used Rational Rose, Poseidon, ArgoUML, and several free Eclipse plugins. Rational's too big and slow, Poseidon was great (free version imprints semi-nude greek god of the sea on your diagrams), and Argo always gave me problems and didn't diagram what I need. I never found a good "free" Eclipse plugin... was always waiting for that magic bullet.
Skectching paper (3' by 2') and a sharpie and pencil. I like the large surface, but find it easier to work on a horizontal surface (rather than using a whiteboard.)
I've actually modeled some flowcharts for the boss in MS Publisher. The drawing tools are good enough, and it converts to pdf. Not free, but may be on your workstation already.
I don't always do use cases, or even user stories, but will always brainstorm how a new app will be used, and by whom, before planning. That helps me better defend my specs.
I am currently using OmniGraffle for both sketching and documentation (combined with paper and pencil of course). It is quite elegant, fast and makes it easy to produce good looking documentation.
The major drawback is that it is not connected to the code at all, which makes refactoring a bit harder, but that goes for many of the tools right? It not free either, although quite cheap for a tool with it's maturity and strength.
Visio mostly, drawboard/pen&paper for drafts. I write my final thoughts on a word processor and publish them for other team members to comment. presentations are also important to deliver your concept to a broad audience (important in large companies where many teams might be affected by your design/new system, and you want to get feedback from everyone).
I will be checking out the recommendations here though, maybe I'll find some new useful tool.
Thats online tool from Autosketch also may be usefull for modeling aand designing. http://draw.labs.autodesk.com/ADDraw/draw.html
I find Umbrello (bumped into it while bopping around KDE on Fedora) to be a nice tool, although I don't have much to compare it to.