What s the best UML diagramming tool

Question

I m trying to choose a tool for creating UML diagrams of all flavours  Usability is a major criteria for me  but I d still take more power with a steeper learning curve and be happy  Free  as in beer  would be nice  but I d be willing to pay if the tool s worth it  What should I be using

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Rational and Together J are best-of-breed products  but expensive   In my experience  I ve enjoyed Eclipse Omondo and Sparx Enterprise Architect   Omondo integrates nicely with Eclipse for code generation  and has a very intuitive feel   However  it is strongly tied to Java   Sparx is a good tool for the price point  but lacks the full range of UML 2 0 diagrams   Do NOT bother with Poseidon   It is buggy  bloated  and unusuable for all intents and purposes

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As mentioned  ArgoUML is a decent tool for UML 1 4 and has recently  Autumn 2008  been receiving some much needed maintainance updates

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Astah UML  ex-JUDE  is pretty good

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As I usually use UML more as a communication tool rather than a modeling tool I sometimes have the need to flex the language a bit  which makes the strict modeling tools quite unwieldy  Also  they tend to have a large overhead for the occasional drawing  This also means I don t give tools that handle round-trip modeling well any bonus points  With this in mind      When using Visio  I tend to use these stencils for my UMLing needs  the built in kind of suck   It could be that I have grown used to it as it is the primary diagramming tool at my current assignment   OmniGraffle also has some UML stencils built in and more are available at Graffletopia  but I wouldn t recommend that as a diagramming tool as it has too many quirks  quirks that are good for many things  but not UML   Free trial though  so by all means        I ve been trying out MagicDraw a bit  but while functional  I found the user interface distracting    Otherwise i find the Topcased an interesting project  or group of projects   Last I used it it still had some bugs  but it worked  and seems to have evolved nicely since  Works great on any Eclipse-enabled platform  Free as in speech and beer     As for the diagramming tool Dia  it s quite ugly  interface and resulting drawings   but it does get the job done  An interesting modeling tool free alternative is Umbrello  but I haven t really used it much   I definitely agree with mashi that whiteboards are great  together with a digital camera or cellphone    Probably some of the nicest tools I ve used belong to the Rational family of tools

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Pen and paper  If you can get the scan into a vector format  that may be useful when making minor amendments

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Just throwing in my two bits here  but I found ArgoUML to be very useful   It takes a little while to get used to it and its a bit buggy  last I checked it was in version  29 or so  but it works pretty well once you get used to it   It handles all types of UML diagrams  which is why I prefer it   Also  its made by tigris  the same people who made subclipse  an SVN repository plug-in for Eclipse

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Take a look at BOUML  multiplatform  QT   works pretty well and supports colaborative work   BOUML is a free UML 2 tool box  under development  allowing you to specify and generate code in C    Java  Idl  Php and Python  BOUML runs under Unix Linux Solaris  MacOS X Power PC and Intel  and Windows   From Wikipedia   The releases prior to version 4 23 are free software licensed under GPL  BOUML 5 and later is proprietary software

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Try alt text http   www sparxsystems com au images products logos EA png   But  It is NOT free  It has amazing features   Check the screenshots here   And they have alt text http   www sparxsystems com au images products logos MDGIntVS-268x73 png  and  alt text http   www sparxsystems com au images products logos MDGIntEclipse-223x73 pngtooo

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I can t believe no one has mentioned NetBeans UML Editor  it s great and satisfied all of my Java based UML requirments   This after I tested JDeveloper UML  ArgoUML and StarUML

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For sequence diagrams you can also try Trace Modeler  It s not free but it has a great interface  very friendly and productive  You can use it on any platform

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Violet   Free  and very easy to use

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I use gmodeler com   It just does class diagrams   Good things   Very simple feature set   Great UI  Very easy to use  Attractive UI    Don t have to login create an account Can save diagrams Free   Bad things   Hard to collaborate -- have to export to xml  I don t care  Can t access diagrams from any machine because it saves to your browser  I don t care  Can t export as image or pdf  I can take a screen shot  Can t generate code for most languages Very simple feature set    I don t care  Each class has an  Event  list which I don t need and I can t get rid of

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For me it s Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems  A very rounded UML tool for a very reasonable price    Very strong feature list including  integrated project management  baselining  export import  including export to html   documentation generation from the model  various templates  Zachman  TOGAF  etc    IDE plugins  code generation  with IDE plugins available for Visual Studio  Eclipse  amp  others   automation API - the list goes on    Oh yeah  don t forget support for source control directly from inside the tool  SVN  CVS  TFS  amp  SCC    I would also stay away from Visio - you only get diagrams  not a model  Rename a class in one place in a UML modelling tool and you rename in all places  This is not the case in Visio

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I will add UMLet which I haven t tried yet  but have been selected at my office to start doing diagrams  Looks simple  diagrams aren t sexy  but it seems quite complete with regard to the kind of diagrams you can do  Seems to have good export capabilities too  important    is flexible can support custom components  and can be used as Eclipse plugin

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I recently conducted a poll  What UML Tools do you use   in my blog  NetBeans UML was was the top opensource choice and Enterprise Architect was the top commercial choice

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In my opinion StarUML is the best

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For my simple  amp  short UML working  I ve used this tool   StarUML - http   staruml sourceforge net en   Great free software for UML drawing     Although the original Star UML is no longer maintained  there s now a fork called White Star UML  which is actively developed

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You may be looking for an automated tool that will automatically generate a lot of stuff for you  But here s a free  generally powerful diagramming tool useful not only for UML but for all kinds of diagramming tasks  It accepts as input and outputs to a wide variety of commonly used file formats  It s called yEd  and it s worth a look

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Take a look at the Sybase PowerDesigner   http   www sybase com products modelingdevelopment powerdesigner    Description   http   en wikipedia org wiki PowerDesigner  It is a vary powerful tool but so is the price

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I advice to use Pacestar UML Diagrammer  It helps you generate UML 2 0 diagrams quickly  easily  flexible AND commonly understood notation   I used it in many projects and I m very satisfied  And too it doesn t use much of memory and space just 6 Mo of Hard Disk   And the most feature that I like it very much is that I can copy diagrams from the editor and paste them in MS Word    so when I need to edit a specific diagram  just I click on and it will be opened in the editor and by closing it  the updates had been done in MS Word document

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Don t forget yuml me  I love it

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I like VisualParadigm mentioned before in this thread  It s powerful and easy to use I think it gives most power comparing to other tools   If you need something simple  quick and easy  and free  there is a great tool called UMLet - I highly recommend this  I ve tried many of UML diagramming tools and this the simplest one  and it still allows to do great diagrams   This is my choice

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You can create UML class  sequence  component  use case  and activity diagrams in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate  You can link these diagrams to Team Foundation work items so you can plan and track development and test work  You can also create sequence  dependency graphs  and layer diagrams from code and use Architecture Explorer to browse and explore your solution    I ve posted more links on my profile for more info

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Visual Paradigm for UML or Dia are good options

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Visual Paradigm for UML http   content usa visual-paradigm com websiteimages images products vpuml60 vpumltitle gif  I m very fond of Visual Paradigm for UML It s very powerful and has a free Community Edition and cheap Personal Edition as well   Agilian http   content usa visual-paradigm com websiteimages images products ag10 agtitle gif  For Agile modeling there s also Agilian which is a bit more flexible  adds extra features to support smartboards and knows mind-mapping as well   The thing I like most about their products is the flexibility  I m using Enterprise Architect at work nowadays but I think it s not smart enough  I want to be able to quick-brainstorm some sequence diagrams and have the application keep my model up-to-date in the background  something VPUML does a very good job at   In my opinion it s way better than Enterprise Architect  though that is a great tool as well

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The TopCoder UML Tool is a very good free UML tool

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1 for TopCoder UML Tool after I had tried most of other free tools  My reasons are     1  The tool can save UML diagrams in the human-readable format XMI  so the file can be fed to the version control system easily     2  Support of Undo Redo  this is the reason I ve discharged ArgoUML      3  The diagram is kept in one single file  and not linked tightly with  workspace  or  project      StarUML is also good  though is old  Unfortunatley it is not developed maintained any longer

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You might want to check out ArgoUML   It s not the best tool I ve ever used  but it s one of the better free ones I ve seen   It s a little slow because it s written in Java  but it let s you do some basic UML diagrams with relative ease

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You should try Creately  Runs in your browser and can do team collaboration   supports sequence diagrams  class  ER  usecase etc  works great and has a free version available   Creately com

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If you re looking to get out the door and working on UML without having to learn a complex new tool I would check out Violet UML   I ve used it to some pretty great success in the past

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For sequence diagrams  only  try websequencediagrams com  It s a freemium  free for the basic tasks  paid for advanced features  product  and lets you quickly bang out a diagram without any fussing around with lines and stencils    Alice- Bob  Authentication Request note left of Bob  Bob thinks about it Bob- Alice  Authentication Response

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ArgoUML   I used this for my thesis and it is well-designed  maybe it has too much feature not very important but I prefer have some uselee feature than don t have some useful feature

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I haven t been able to find a top-notch free UML diagramming tool  but if you re interested in pure diagramming  as opposed to round-trip-engineering  I d go with Microsoft Visio  If you want full round-trip engineering  Rational Rose   This list of UML tools on Wikipedia might also come in handy

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I recommend Software Ideas Modeler  It has a lot of features and an intuitive GUI

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Dia is a possible choice  It s definitely not the best tool  but it is functional

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If you want to model at diagram level and also have a clean metamodel the new Omondo build allows live synchronization between MOF and UML Diagrams  Just amazing to see my diagram and the xmi live synchronized each time I change something in my diagram and the model is changed  What is most incredible is that the model is also the metamodel and the MOF because everything is lived synchronized  Very powerful new concept for my point of view   I also like Java code annotation and JPA support in the class diagram and in the model  I don t know any other tool having these 2 incredible features

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In my career I often needed to draw UML diagrams and generate Java code  I found MagicDraw most appealing and I m a happy user  I think their licensing model is fair because it allows to pay for what you need  I prefer it to other products I used in my  distant  past  ArgoUML  Poseidon  Rational Rose  Dia  Be aware that my experiences on other products are obsolete and have maybe significantly improved or changed their licensing model  Maybe you should start with an open-source tool and decide later whether to spend some bucks    With MagicDraw you can document your code by generating diagrams from code  You can also model first  then generate the code  It also integrates well with several IDEs

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You might want to take a look at MagicDraw or Visual Paradigm for UML  Both offer community editions that  of course  don t span the full feature range  but may well be sufficient if you want to create diagrams only and not generate code or do full round-trip engineering

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I strongly recommend BOUML  It s a free UML modelling application  which    is extremely fast  fastest UML tool ever created  check out benchmarks   has rock solid C    Java  PHP and others import support  is multiplatform  Linux  Windows  other OSes   has a great SVG export support  which is important  because viewing large graphs in vector format  which scales fast in e g  Firefox  is very convenient  you can quickly switch between  birds eye  view and class detail view   is full featured  impressively intensively developed  look at development history  it s hard to believe that such fast progress is possible   supports plugins  has modular architecture  this allows user contributions  looks like BOUML community is forming up    Believe me  there is no better tool  StarUML is a retarded turtle compared to BOUML  ArgoUML simply doesn t work  Dia is a ergonomy -1 software

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http   plantuml sourceforge net index html

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You can also check out Lucid Chart for uml and other types of diagramming

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For sequence diagrams there is free java based Quick Sequence Diagram Editor  The sequence is written in text editor and then rendered by QSDE engine  It exports to variety of vector and bitmap file formats

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In my practice i use Sequence Diagram Editor  it is really fast and helpful tool  the one thing i don t like about it is that it is commercial product  not free

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I have tried MagicDraw and it is very good  only the community edition though   Also I have tried omondo  it looks fantastic but it is very expensive for commercial use

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Enterprise Architect from Sparx systems is the best tool I ve used  A bit expensive at  199  professional edition   but IMO it s worth it

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Obviously if you are serious about UML in the long run you need to use a software UML tool like the ones suggested in the other answers  but I ve found that a whiteboard is one of the best tools for UML diagramming  especially during the design phase  or when you are exploring different alternatives   Nothing beats a whiteboard for speed flexibility in my mind   They are also great for collaboration assuming you are collocated physically

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PlantUML is an open-source markup-language-to-UML-diagram tool in Java that deserves to be mentioned here  It ranks high on the usability scale  because of its intuitive syntax for the various diagrams and diagram components

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Some context  Recently for graduate school I researched UML tools for usability and UML comprehension in general for an independent project   I also model architect for a living   The previous posts have too many answers and not enough questions   A common misunderstanding is that UML is about creating diagrams   Sure  diagrams are important  but really you are creating a model   Here are the questions that should be answered as each vendor product solution does some things better than others   Note   The listed answers are my view as the best even if other products support a given feature or need    Are you modeling or drawing   Drawing - ArgoUML  free implementations  and Visio  Will you be modeling in the future   For basic modeling - Community editions of pay products  Do you want to formalize your modeling through profiles or meta-models  OCL   Sparx  RSM  Visual Paradigm  Are you concerned about model portability  XMI support   GenMyModel  Sparx  Visual Paradigm  Altova  Do you have an existing set of documents that you need to work with   Depends on the documents  Would you want to generate code stubs or full functioning code  GenMyModel  Visual Paradigm  Sparx  Altova  Do you need more mature processes such as use case management  pattern creation  asset creation  RUP integration  etc   RSA RSM IBM Rational Products     Detailed Examples   IBM Rational Software Architect did not implement UML 2 0 all the way when it comes to realizes type relationships when creating a UML profile  but Visual Paradigm and Sparx got it right   Ok  that was way too detailed  so a simpler example would be ArgoUML  which has no code generation features and focuses on drawing more than the modeling aspect of UML   Sparx and Visual Paradigm do UML really well and generate code well  however  hooking into project lifecycles and other process is where RSM RSA is strong   Watch out for closed or product specific code generation processes or frameworks as you could end up stuck with that product   This is a straight brain dump so a couple details may not be perfect  however  this should provide a general map to the questions and solutions to looking into   NEW - Found a good list of many UML tools with descriptions   Wiki UML Tool List

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I have been working on UML standards since 1999 and may tell you that Sparx Enterprise Architect should not be considered as a UML tool as it does not follow UML 2 specification  Its diagrams look as UML but names of the properties and the way as they specified are not following UML standard  MagicDraw and IBM RSA are the true UML tool on the market so far

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You should try Modelio Free Edition  It support UML2  BPMN  SOA and XMI  It is simple to use and their forum is very active

[uml] What's the best UML diagramming tool?

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