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1. Technical Architecture Modelling Tools In Software Free
2. Software Architecture Modeling Tools
3. Business Architecture Modeling Tools

What tools do you use to speed up documenting application design.Namely, creating wireframes, flowcharts. What other methods do you find essential .

Is the general consensus that use cases are vital, or is a good functional spec document easier and quicker

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18 Answers

ArgoUML has been my friend for many years when it comes to drawing UML. ArgoUML is a tool and you're asking about both tools and the processes used (i.e. 'which artifacts do you create with the tools). We generally stick to user stories (agile project) and do not make 'classical' use cases and use case documents.

I use Balsamiq Mockups for UI design and Visual Paradigm Aigilian for modelling - it allows to nicely go from high-level business processes to granular requirements and UML modelling.. And it's quite cheap.

Sparx EA is big bang for the buck. Multi language support with roundtripping and team support. Been using it for three years without complaint.

I've used Rational Rose, Poseidon, ArgoUML, and several free Eclipse plugins. Rational's too big and slow, Poseidon was great (free version imprints semi-nude greek god of the sea on your diagrams), and Argo always gave me problems and didn't diagram what I need. I never found a good 'free' Eclipse plugin.. was always waiting for that magic bullet.

The pencil add-on for Firefox is pretty good for simple diagrams and GUI sketches.

And if you don't like it as a FF add-on, you can download a standalone version for Linux or windows.

I use Freemind to handle all the ideas i get when im brainstorming a the solution of a problem. And then by using the icons and colors on each node i can prioritize them. I really like that freeware tool.

Technical Architecture Modelling Tools In Software Free

Mostly Dia (http://projects.gnome.org/dia/), whiteboard and for quick 'drawings' pen and paper.

Paper and pencil, and whiteboard and dry erase marker. Later I transfer it to Visio once I've worked out the major problems. Unfortunately it doesn't meet your requirement of free, sorry.

I use a four-section whiteboard with embedded printer. That way, I can both do design privately at my desk or in a group of peers, and it lets me print out my ramblings for later on.

I've never found an application that gives me all those capabilities (although a 6 foot by 4 foot monitor would be neat, I don't think my employer will pony up the cash for it).

Sometimes the best technological solution is no technology at all (although I will be checking out the other answers to see if the tools have improved since the last time I looked - I'm pretty cynical however so I approach it with a certain pessimism).

OpenOffice.org's 'Draw' does a decent job for creating flowcharts and similar diagrams, as long as you don't expect it to know (and enforce) the syntax and semantics of a given diagram type.

dia, graphviz (dot), pen and paper, and my own mind.

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All of these are free as in speech. Dia and graphviz are also free as in beer.

Gliffy (wireframing, flowcharting) has a free basic version but all documents produced this way are public, therefore not very usable I guess.

I usually find myself using MS Excel for drawing flowcharts rather than Visio because of its ease of use, and the juxtaposition of spreadsheet calculations with the flowchart itself. I write the pseudocode right next to the flowchart in MS Excel, and that makes reviewing much easier.

Skectching paper (3' by 2') and a sharpie and pencil. I like the large surface, but find it easier to work on a horizontal surface (rather than using a whiteboard.)

I've actually modeled some flowcharts for the boss in MS Publisher. The drawing tools are good enough, and it converts to pdf. Not free, but may be on your workstation already.

I don't always do use cases, or even user stories, but will always brainstorm how a new app will be used, and by whom, before planning. That helps me better defend my specs.

Visio mostly, drawboard/pen&paper for drafts. I write my final thoughts on a word processor and publish them for other team members to comment. presentations are also important to deliver your concept to a broad audience (important in large companies where many teams might be affected by your design/new system, and you want to get feedback from everyone).

I will be checking out the recommendations here though, maybe I'll find some new useful tool.

Thats online tool from Autosketch also may be usefull for modeling aand designing.http://draw.labs.autodesk.com/ADDraw/draw.html

I am currently using OmniGraffle for both sketching and documentation (combined with paper and pencil of course). It is quite elegant, fast and makes it easy to produce good looking documentation.

The major drawback is that it is not connected to the code at all, which makes refactoring a bit harder, but that goes for many of the tools right? It not free either, although quite cheap for a tool with it's maturity and strength.

Software Architecture Modeling Tools

I find Umbrello (bumped into it while bopping around KDE on Fedora) to be a nice tool, although I don't have much to compare it to.

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Purpose and objects of computer-based modeling and simulation have evolved significantly since their first applications mid of last century. It is now an established scientific and industrial analytics and design technology with strong focus and strength to analyze in particular specific physical product features [1, 2]. Numerous powerful tool implementations are available for use as single stand alone tools and increasingly integrated into industrial engineering workflows. But the simulation focus continues to address larger systems, not just components or small products. In the industrial contextthis involves tasks of such large and increasingly complex systems over their whole lifecycle—from first tender to operations and service. Examples range from decision making during bidding and conceptual design, detailed engineering, testing and commissioning, as well as optimized runtime operations and service [3]. Lumped, so-called 0D simulation, and discretized 1D simulation are main technologies to address these tasks¹ and the presented architectural approach tries to get a grip on them.

The considered fields of application include large process and production plants, power stations and grids, communication networks, different kinds of machines and vehicles as well as interconnected heterogeneous infrastructure systems. All these systems can be characterized by network-type structures composed of a multitude of typically heterogenous interconnected components. Another important key characteristic of such industrial systems are their automation systems for process control by open- and/or closed-loop mechanisms on different levels of detail.

Several commercially available tools, like Matlab Simulink [4], AMESim [5] or Modelica-based Dymola [6], address the simulation of such technical systems. They focus on certain well-confined engineering tasks in specific lifecycle phases—mostly detailed engineering—and often trade in computational efficiency (speed and system sizes) against restrictions in modeling capabilities and system characteristics. Recently, such problem centric modeling and simulation tools become challenged by further demands. First of all, soaring effort and cost of modeling and tool development are limiting factors to further progress. Hence, the abundance of available models, model libraries and tool implementations seems to be an attractive resource and value to reuse concepts. But heterogeneity and missing interoperability are critical obstacles to pursue such approaches. Secondly, the continuing progress of computing hardware and network band width opens opportunities to break up complexity bottlenecks. Recent trends, like multi–core hardware architectures, distributed and cloud computing demand for new systematic program structures and data flows but are laborious and tricky to be implemented and exploited [7]. Modeling and simulation architectures need to efficiently support and take advantage of these computing resources and paradigm evolutions. Thirdly, the involvement of different disciplines and domains in the system development process further increases system heterogeneity and poses additional challenges regarding the interplay of multiple disciplines, such as mechanics, electronics, software and communications, during system evaluations [8, 9]. And the system viewpoint is even further expanding to a lifecycle view, which allows for increasing quality and efficiency of system engineering and operation, e.g. system design for reduced lifecycle cost.

The simulation architecture described in this article avoids the discussed restrictions of existing tools and faces the upcoming challenges as it allows utilization of a single simulation environment throughout all lifecycle phases and still offers the appropriate application support for each task at hand by deployment of customized simulation solutions.

The following section introduces three industrial examples of infrastructure and plant systems—a pumping station for drinking water, the heat recovery module of a power plant and a sewage infrastructure network—which exemplify and illustrate actual simulation issues of real projects. The section also introduces a further key factor to tackle the complexity of modeling and simulation tasks by differentiating between the views of engineers and tool developers.

Business Architecture Modeling Tools

The modeling and simulation framework CoSMOS (Complex Systems Modeling, Simulation and Optimization)² is introduced and outlined in Sect. 4. Its concept as well as the general modular architecture is presented. Two main aspects of CoSMOS—its focus on a client server architecture and its embedded simulator—are discussed in detail.

Section 5 exemplifies the applicability of CoSMOS and its specific features along the three industrial examples and their individual simulation tasks introduced in Sect. 2.

Together with a short summary, the final section delivers an outlook on some specific issues still open to be solved as well as future challenges.