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Update on UML Designer
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Loading ...In a previous post a couple of weeks back I stated that I started on developing a UML designer. Mostly because I couldn’t find any recent releases that are free and work decent any more. Since some time has past and a lot of work has been done its time for a quick update.
Initially the idea was to develop the application in C++.Net which was a challenge to say the least. I was disappointed when I couldn’t integrate older C++ libraries I had already written with the .Net application. So as all angry people I abandoned this course of action all together and switched over to C#. Lets just say this put the work back a couple of weeks, as I have no knowledge what so ever on C# development 
.
So what have I been up to since this idea popped into my head:
- A basic GUI has been build, which is pretty close to final (it may not be the nicest interface but it works)
- Some basic validation system has been build to verify the model against rules of UML (eg: which type of members are allowed in objects)
- A lot of research into delegates, log4net, resource embedding and multi language support
It is unfortunately still way to early to release anything useful that can be played with. Mainly because much of the interface is not even working yet. Even so I have included a screenshot of what it looks like. There is still a lot of work to be done, just a short list would be:
- Completing the UML model powering the tool, including all validation rules
- Building a drawing system to display the classes in an UML design
- Adding UI dialogs for all the various options supported
- Adding more language to the tool, currently only Java rules are included
- Build a drag and drop pane for the various type of objects that can be dropped in the UML design
And of course the nice to haves way down the line, all based upon an existing UML design:
- Add sequence diagram support
- Add data flow diagram support
- Add event state diagram support
Starting a new project: UML designer
In my line of work it is required to create a UML diagram every now and then. The problem with that is that there are no good free tools available any more that allow you to do so. There used to be a tool called StarUML, which is really good. Unfortunately it is no longer supported nor being developed.
In the forums of StarUML there was a lot of chatter about setting up a new group to continue where StarUML left off. But I’ve not been able to find any progress on that at all, after 3 years or so. So I took it upon myself to start building my own tool to design UML diagrams, which is a rather big project. Probably the biggest I’ve set out to do so far. At the moment I’m sorta at the stage of designing some basic user interface for the tool (basic prototype only). Once that is done I will look into how to setup the program and start the happy coding .
The idea is to do all the development in a combination of C++.NET as well as some older C++ libraries that I already created in the past. After I’m done the program will be released as a freeware application with limited support.
It will probably be a long time before I can release anything useful to the public, as I’m doing this in my spare time. If you are interested then give me a message and I’ll try and keep you updated. If you have some useful ideas then please sent them to me. I’d love any feedback about it.
