What is the best mac based or even better cross platform UML Application available both costed and opensource / freeware?
OmniGraffle [1]: quite possibly the best diagramming software ever.
[1] http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/Astah [1] is a cross-platform UML editor. I'm using 'astah* community' on Mac OS X 10.6.
[1] http://astah.change-vision.com/en/If you're looking for a cross platform/web based solution, check out Gliffy [1]. It also integrates into several wiki's. Wiki's with pictures always look nicer!
[1] http://www.gliffy.com/OmniGraffle Pro [1] includes a reasonable set of UML stencils.
Even better: If you drag a framework to the OmniGraffle Pro application it will generate a diagram for every class in the framework, with links for subclasses. This can be quite a time saver.
[1] http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/pro/Check out this more or less complete list of UML-drawing tools [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unified_Modeling_Language_toolssame as @danb I use Visual Paradigm [1] (not free, but they do have a Community Edition [2]), got to say it is not the most user friendly tool but does its job and covers a lot details in modeling... in windows I'd say nothing beats Enterprise Architect... but Visio comes handy for really fast diagramming for documentation purposes and is cheaper.
Cheers!
G
[1] http://www.visual-paradigm.com/I haven't touched a Mac in about 15 years but I think ArgoUML [1] should do the trick for you. I use it on Windows platforms but Mac is supported too.
[1] http://argouml.tigris.org/There are two questions that you should think on, before choosing the right tool:
Do you only like to sketch/draw/paint/depict UML Diagrams? --> so have a look on OmniGraffle and it's competitors or any other sketching tool with some kind of UML Stencils.
Do you like to model UML Models and visualize them as Diagrams? --> you should look for a real UML Tool.
Next you should decide, if you can ignore, that most of the real UML Tools are originally written for Windows and that's why there are many UI-Compromises in the Mac OS X ports of these tools. This is also true for any Java "Cross-Plattform" UML Tools (MagicDraw, Argo/Poseidon, aso.).
AFAIK there is no "pure" Mac OS X UML Tool that supports MODELING (instead of sketching) UML Models with a complete Cocoa look and feel. (Especially FEEL!)
I heard of this from a SuperUser answer [1], but nonetheless: yEd seems hella cool. I has some really nice algorithms for doing the layout after you've done the connections. The amount of shapes available for UML by default is a bit underwhelming, but I'm sure more can be added.
Check it out.
[1] http://superuser.com/questions/174218/free-diagram-tool-for-mac-os-xI've used visual paradigm [1]... it's not free, but it's pretty powerful and cross-platform... might be worth a demo to you.
[1] http://www.visual-paradigm.com/TopCoder UML Tool [1] looks like pretty tool for sketching. I've just found it, but didn't test it in a deep yet.
[1] http://www.topcoder.com/wiki/display/tc/TopCoder+UML+ToolI know the question is more than one year old, but BOUML [1] is definitely a tool you want to look at; it supports UML2, works on pretty much every existing platform [2] and is actively developed [3]
[1] http://bouml.free.fr/index.htmlMy opinion is that MagicDraw [1] is the best UML tool available that runs natively (well, Java) on OSX. I have used it professionally and its feature set is very complete. It is, however, expensive (not compared to Rational, of course).
Having used, practically, all of the available commercial UML tools, I actually prefer Enterprise Architect [2], but it only runs under Windows or Linux. Many years ago, I did manage to get the Linux version running under OSX, but it was painful and I would not recommend it. Shame, because EA is excellent value for money.
[1] http://www.magicdraw.com/http://umlcanvas.org/ is a pretty nice canvas-based web application for creating UML diagrams. But you need to be comfortable with or willing to learn ADL since it doesn't support drawing on the diagram directly.
e.g. you'll input something like:
diagram SimpleTest +dynamic {
[@382,177]
interface MyTestInterface {
operation testOperation :Boolean +public {
argument test :String;
}
}
And it will generate the diagram. The +dynamic means you'll have rudimentary mouse manipulation of the generated diagram.
Cacoo [1] or Creately [2] Also are quite nice online UML editors. I've used cacoo a lot, its really simple. Cacoo its free until 25 sheets (or diagrams) and Creatley its free until 5 public diagrams.
[1] https://cacoo.com/I used to use Visual Paradigm Community, but switched to StarUML. I'm not sure if it's on Mac, though.
I've been using Poseidon from Gentleware for years on Linux and Mac. The community edition uses a subscription model that's pretty inexpensive. The UI on Mac isn't necessarily OS-X style, but it's worked well for me for Java projects. One unfortunate, but probably temporary, issue is that the 8.0 Beta is not currently file compatible with the earlier version.
Borland Together Architect is fully supported on OS X and the files are transportable to the Windows and Linux versions of the product too. Unfortunately being 'the best of the best' it does not come cheap - £3000 a copy in the UK.
I've used Rational, Enterprise Archtitect and Borland extensively and BTA is my tool of choice.
Eclipse UML2 Tools anyone ? http://www.vogella.de/articles/UML/article.html Plus you can generate code from your models. I use eclipse for quite everything (except cocoa apps) (php, flex, java...) the "I" in "Eclipse IDE" is just unbeatable ! I love you eclipse.
MacA&D [1] <-- have look at this one.. i think it's osx only and without some crappy java on board! Too bad it's really old software =(
[1] http://www.excelsoftware.com/macosxproducts.html