Magic Draw

MagicDraw UML - a commercial UML modelling tool, written in Java. See http://www.magicdraw.com for more.

From comparisons with the default tool people think of for UML, RationalRose, a much better product all around. Sadly, it seems that to the vast majorty of people, Rational Rose is synonymous with UML diagrams, and better tools languish. Just like Microsoft Word is that de facto standard word processor, RationalRose is the de facto UML tool -- everyone uses it because it's the tool everyone else uses. Trying to convince management to buy MagicDraw instead of Rose is like trying to convince them to use an ObjectDatabase instead of Oracle. As a side issue, has anyone created any diagram with Rose and saved to the supposedly vendor-neutral XMI format to load into any other UML tool? --StevenNewton

Magic Draw has also, in my opinon, really wandered from a needed niche. Many times, I don't need to do round tripping or the like, I just need to hammer out a quick UML document to share with collegues in a document, or over e-mail. (Or simply including use case pictures, etc) This was the tool that Magic Draw was, and I was going to purchase a license at one point, to discover that rather than being a reasonably priced quick-modeling tool, Magic Draw now is "fully featured" with the high price tag to go with it. Maybe MagicDraw can create a niche in the anti-IBM, anti-Borland world (now), but I still need a cheap, usable diagramming tool. Any suggestions? -- ChadThompson

MagicDraw has a personal version that I bought in 5/2004 for about $250. I haven't used Rational XDE, so I can't comment on that, but MagicDraw is an excellent UML tool that allows you to structure your model logically as opposed to Rose that forces specific views. As an added bonus MagicDraw runs on Mac OSX and Linux. Be careful with the XMI import/export. Great models in MagicDraw require a lot of rework in Rose. Also, anything but flat modeling structure will be lost when Rose looks for it's "Logical View". Cheers, WilliamMcKibben.

How about ArgoUML? It's improving rapidly. http://argouml.tigris.org/ -- TobyCabot?

Look at EclipseUML from www.omondo.com it is a very good free modeling tool that runs on top of eclipse

Or PoseidonUML - based on ArgoUML

There is also WinA&D and MacA&D by Excel Softare http://www.excelsoftware.com

"hammer out quick" ... then check UML Pad http://web.tiscalinet.it/ggbhome (Free and small, the exe is only round about 2.6 MB of size (Vers. 1.15))

To say nothing of Dia; I like what I see, although I admittedly haven't worked with it much.

Open source, cross-platform, etc...