Recently I have some needs to draw some neat UML diagrams for demonstration purpose. I’m never Ration Rose fan, which is really too difficult for my simple usage.

Microsoft Visio has always been the choice for drawing diagram, and it does really good job. However, I prefer using Pavel Hruby’s Stencil instead of the original default one. They are a lot more useful and UML 2.0 compliant.

But this time I have tried another little tool for sketching UML diagrams. Try this: UMLet. First of all, it’s free and it’s written in Java. Second, it is in some way more convenient than Visio. The main concept of this thing is to help you draw fast. You don’t need to go through any pop-up/dialog to fill in the value/text you want to be shown. The drawing is as powerful and as convenient as Visio. You can also choose to export the diagram into JPEG/PDF/SVG/EPS formats. Neat!

If all you want is to quickly draw a diagram and use it to discuss with your peer, this little tool suffices.