Free UML Modeling Tools

[Steven Barnes]

Does anyone know of any free or inexpensive UML modeling tools? Anything in open source?
Thanks,
Steven Barnes

[mandar kharat]

you can get a 60 day evaluation copy of microsoft visio. Its a good modelling tool.
Regds.

[Rick Salsa]

Talk a look at Poseidon for UML. You can get the Community Edition for free. I haven't tried the latest version, but the last one I thought was really good. It doesn't have all the features that Rational Rose does, but it is only in version 1.1. Its slowing shaping in to a great tool, and its made in Java, so it will work cross platform.
/rick

[Shin Hashitani]

Hi everyone,
A little while ago, I downloaded Poseidon for UML CE 1.1 mentioned above. It is very easy to use, and I like it a lot. I used to use FreeHand to visualize diagrams for school projects(Well, not a good idea.), and at least Poseidon saved me a lot of time.
You can use Poseidon as a module for NetBeans, which creates a tab in IDE so you can switch bak and forth between other modules. However, it might add a little more pressure on the machine. (Left alone NetBeans is heavy enough.) My machine couldn't take it, so I now use as a stand alone tool.
Howerver, I have never used other tools.
Poseidon is easy to use, but how good (or bad) it is is something I don't know. CE doesn't have a control over code generation feature, but non-free version does.
But what is missing?
Or is there something missing?
I heard a little about Rational Rose, and a little curious about what it does. If you have used both Rational Rose and Poseidon, and have a clear reason why you think Rational Rose worth the price while Poseidon CE is free. I have looked into some documents, but I am not sure which feature is what makes Rational Rose great. I am a student, and I'd really like to hear from professionals in the field, who use CASE tool on daily basis.
Thank you for your time.
Shin Hashitani

[Paul Michael]

I've heard argoUML's ok but I haven't tried it yet.

[Ed Savage]

I haven't tried it myself but it looks like Oracle's new free JDeveloper IDE has some type of UML modeling tool integrated into it.
Has anyone used it? Any comments?
--Ed

[shailesh sonavadekar]

argoUML was open sopurce project ( i don't what is the status now ). it was definitely a tool worth trying. now also i feel you can give try to latest version.

[Suhel Rizvi]

Rational and Together both allow you to download free evaluation versions of their UML tools which could be useful as a starting point.

[Rajinder Yadav]

Steven, here you go!
If you want a free UML tool, go check out ArgoUML, a tool that's also written in java

[alex earnshaw]

Hi all,
I have used several modelling tools in the past:
Poseidon (which is actually just an extension of ArgoUML) is pretty good, but I have only recently started using it. The user interface can be very slow and unresponsive and support for printing/exporting diagrams is pretty primitive in 1.1. However it is a good tool with lots of features included in the free version including reverse engineering of source files.
I have used Visio's UML plug-in and it too is good in that it supports C++/IDL in addition to Java. It too has an unresponsive GUI but printing/exporting support is excellent. It does not offer code generation or reverse engineering.
I have used Rose once or twice, and to be honest I do not think it is worth the money at all - it is vastly over-complex. I would not even consider using it unless you are designing an extremely complex project, which actually requires all the features that Rose offers.
Some time ago I used TogetherJ and a commercial product Webgain StructureBuilder which are both pretty good, for smaller projects anyway. The versions I used did not support all of the UML diagrams, but both were excellent at code generation. I'm not sure if current versions support more UML diagrams?
To summarize:
If you only want class diagrams I would choose TogetherJ for ease of use and good code generation.
If you want a full set of diagrams with code generation I would choose Poseidon, and just hope that they will soon improve the print/export support!
If you want a full set of diagrams and also want to be able to design IDL/C++ I would choose Visio, as long as you can live without code generation!
For reverse engineering, Poseidon is the only free tool that supports it, as far as I am aware anyway...
HTH
Alex

[Shin Hashitani]

Hi Alex,
Thanks for the info. It was very helpful. I wasn't sure what kind of other tools were out there, it was great to know some practical opinions on those tools.
About export feature of Poseidon,
I did have some trouble with it, too. SVG output sure is nice, but it is very difficult to incorporate in the current environment. (Somehow a lot of tools export SVG, but not so many can import SVG.) In the last school project, I exported as Encapsulated Post Script(EPS) and read into Adobe Illustrator 9. I was not a happy with the grouping. I had to ungroup and regroup a lot in order to adjust the diagram. It seems like Poseidon export graphics as a "final" version, and don't care much about modification afterwards. In the actual document creation, I took three steps:
1. export from Poseidon as ESP
2. read into Illustrator, modify it, and exported as Windows Meta File (WMF)
3. read into Microsoft Word 2000, and adjust the size to fit into it.
It was a little painful when I had to make a small adjustment in the original. If Poseidon has a scale (or guide), I can just export it as a final version.
Oh,
and the bigger problem is that Microsoft Word doesn't have a good vector support. It's not like we use QuarkExpress for the design document. (We don't publish it and print 10,000 copies, you know?) EPS is kind of a standard, so it would be nice to have an "ACTUAL" support for EPS.
But I am still very gratful for Poseidon. (argoUML)
It's a very nice tool and free.
Oh, and I have to try the reverse-engineering feature!
Thanks

Shin Hashitani