Ask HN: Favorite UML Modeling Tool?

17 points·alangibson··7 comments

Hi HN. What's your current favorite browser-based UML modeling tool? Is there an industry standard standout at this point?

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Plantuml and mermaidjs

https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/

Also, while I hear the "browser based" in your question, be aware there is a plugin for the JetBrains tools that gives instant feedback, which can speed up the "development cycle" for PlantUML diagrams: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7017-plantuml-integrati... and https://github.com/esteinberg/plantuml4idea#readme

Regarding mermaidjs, I draw attention to the fact that GitLab's markdown language supports it, which is incredibly handy in MR descriptions or wiki pages: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/markdown.html#mermaid

Are you looking for a textual UML tool (https://modeling-languages.com/text-uml-tools-complete-list/) to "write" your UML models and then easily render them in your browser?

Or for a graphical online UML editor (https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools-uml-...)?

If the former, then plantUML is my favourite. If the latter, there quite a few options but one that's easy and fast is http://www.umletino.com/

> textual UML tool (https://modeling-languages.com/text-uml-tools-complete-list/)

Mermaid is in the comments, not the main list, but I have been using it for a while now for our specs; it can be rendered to whatever image, but also on the client side which is great for embedding in 'living documents'.

https://plantuml.com/

it can be browser-based but there are many integrations, for example it's trivial to have it rendered as image in markdown files

PlantUML with the C4 extension

https://github.com/plantuml-stdlib/C4-PlantUML

A whiteboard and a marker.

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