UMLBoard

As useful as UML class diagrams are, there are surprisingly few good options for macOS for creating them. General purpose drawing apps waste a developer's time choosing appropriate shapes and lines --- time that would be better spent on designing software. With some additional work, UMLBoard could become an indispensible tool. It's not quite there, yet, however. The round context menu is useful, but if you add something near the edge of the display the menu may show up partly off-screen. In this case, I'd like to see the canvas scroll enough to display the full menu. Line management becomes a challenge as diagrams become more complex. Lines will sometimes automatically route through other objects, particularly as classes and interfaces are moved to make room for new objects. Recently added custom anchor points help, but if you're dealing with a number of overlapping lines (such as you might seen when a class implements a number of interfaces) these get difficult to manage. A possible solution might be some sort of "shared" anchor point that lines can be routed through, like you might use a wire tie to bundle cables together, but then how would you select a single line to remove it from that anchor, and do it in a way that's intuitive? It's not an easy UI problem to solve. Undo operations can be a bit dotty. Add a line between objects, for instance, then go elsewhere in the diagram, add a new class with a couple functions, drag change the order of functions, change types, etc., then try undoing those changes. As you undo, you'll find the newly created functions and class stay around, but the line you first drew gets undone. The fix here is to comprehensively make sure all additions to the diagram have operations added to the undo stack. Don't try this experiment on a production diagram, though! As I was experimenting for this review, "undo" unexpectedly erased every relationship I'd drawn in my diagram. That's a flat-out bug, and a serious one. No "redo" functionality could recover the work, and I had to reload a saved version. The workaround for the moment is good practice when working with any software that doesn't auto-save: save and back up your work frequently. I'm going to be keeping an eye on this software, which at the moment is actively supported. I don't feel it's sufficiently mature for a production environment or complex diagrams, but it certainly shows the potential to get there.

This is an awesome UML board to do quick sketches of models with all the features you need in the moment. However, I cannot save a project. So for me, this is crucial for the amount of clients I have. Please fix these issues and it would easily be a five star app.

This is a clever little app that knows what it shoud focus on - class diagrams and explanatory text around those diagrams. you can almost treat it a bit like a word processor with embedded diagrams, i find i can construct nice little design explanations with it. It would be nice if it did multi-page or something equivalent, so i could hold a larger model, but in it's current form it's very tight and useful so it's hard to complain!

This little app shows a lot of promise. It's great for sketching quick UML class diagrams with a minimum of effort. There are two areas where it badly needs improvement. First, it does a very poor job of following basic macOS file management conventions. For example, if you double click one of its documents, the Finder launches the app, but the app refuses to open the doccument. The only wan to open an existing document is from the File menu within the app. The second area where this app badly needs improvement is in the routing algorithm for class associations. The app sometimes routes these in crazy ways and the user has no way to nudge the lines into a more sensible position. Despite these two flaws, this is still a useful tool and is worth the 99 cents price. I hope the author continues to improve this very nice little app and addresses the issues I noted above.

Hold control, tap anywhere, and you get a thoughtfully designed modal to add an object. Do the same on a class object to add properties. And of course a simple drag to connect objects. It's limited on features, and the results look as disposable as an ink drenched napkin. Exactly what I wanted!