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Does anybody use the Class Designer much in Visual Studio?
I have downloaded the Modeling Power Toys for 2005 and have been impressed with what I've seen so far. The MSDN Class Designer Blog doesn't seem to have been updated for a while but it still looks quite useful.
Is the Class Designer a quick way to build the basic application or should I just work out on paper and then start coding?
Thanks
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The Class Designer is a great tool for visualizing your application. Use it when working with existing code to view the class structure and their relationships. Use it to graphically create new classes or edit existing classes. Or use it to refactor your application.
Visio launches, and the new UML diagram file opens for editing. In Visual Studio, select a solution in the Solution Explorer. On the Project menu, click Add Existing Item. In the Add Existing Solution Item dialog box, select the UML diagram you want, and then click Open.
Add a class diagram based on existing typesIn Solution Explorer, open a class file's context menu (right-click) and then choose View Class Diagram. In Class View, open the namespace or type context menu and then choose View Class Diagram. If Class View is not open, open Class View from the View menu.
As a visualization tool, or for exploratory purposes (drawing up multiple options to see what they look like) it's not bad, but generally I find the object browser does fine for most stuff I care about.
As a code generation tool, it's a terrible idea.
The whole idea that we will design all our code structure first, then fill in the blanks with small bits of implementation is fundamentally broken.
The only time you actually know what the code structure should look like, is if you've done the exact same thing before - however then you can just use your previous code, and you don't need to draw up any new code in any kind of designer.
If you decide ahead of time to use a particular class structure before you've actually tried to solve the problem, there is a 100% chance that you will pick the wrong design, and shoot yourself in the foot.
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Short answer: No.
Longer answer: No, not at all. There's a reason it hasn't been updated.
[EDIT] @ MrBrutal - Sorry - do you mean to generate code or just represent a design? Because I took your question as to generate code for you.
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