Good tool for system design in Java/Eclipse?

Question

Does anyone know of a good tool for laying out class diagrams and the like for eclipse?

Preferably soemthing that will let me draw up the relationships between the classes/interfaces and will then generate stub code for me to fill in.

I've just been handed a 288 page API doc and told to implement it in Java and I want to make sure I have a good design before I start writing code.

Answer 1

You're probably looking for an UML tool. Check the relevant Eclipse Plugin Central category.

Note that UML has been a hype. Today, there are people who can live with its shortcomings and there are people who despise it.

If you just want to collect and sort your ideas, I suggest to try a wiki or a mindmap (XMind or FreeMind).

Answer 2

http://www.soyatec.com/euml2/ is for eclipse user.

However personally I am using StarUML, which is not eclipse based (http://staruml.sourceforge.net/en/). I use it because it can start up faster compared to eclipse tools :)

Answer 3

I've evaluated several Eclipse based UML tools, and the best by far, in my opinion, was the free edition of Soyatec's eUML2 (http://www.soyatec.com/euml2/).

Having said that, I should qualify that eUML2 was suitable for me, in the sense that I was looking for:

1. Primarily clas and sequence diagram creation (which happens to be the only two diagrams type the free version of eUML2 supports).
2. Built-in support for Java libraries (recognizes all classes in the project class path, I was never able to get Rational Software Architect to do this) and features (e.g., inner classes).
3. Basic code generation (specifically, Java Bean getter/setters).
4. Integration with SCMs (more on this below).

If you need more diagrams than what I needed, but are willing to put up with lack of SCM integration, you may want to look into the free version of Omondo EclipseUML (http://www.eclipsedownload.com/ - as far as I can tell, this is a fork of Soyatec's product), which supports 5-6 different diagrams types, IIRC, but will disable itself if it detects that you've turned on SCM integration on your project (which I find very annoying).

Alternative, you can pay for the full versions of either of these. They are really expensive though.

Let me know if you need more details.

Answer 4

Design Pattern Toolkit is an Eclipse-enabled tool for generating applications based on customizable, model-driven architecture patterns. This tool automates the use of the best known application development practices. With Design Pattern Toolkit, an expert in the art of developing a particular class of application (such as portlet, Web service, or JDBC bean) can encode the implementation steps that take application requirements and produce a complete, working application.