UML Designer User's Guide


Designing classes and building class diagrams

Our analysis so far has given us use cases, actors, things, responsibilities, and protocols. Now we can use the model we have built to begin design. Until this point, we have not made any assumptions about any particular implementation technology (other than a general object-oriented approach), but it's now time to start mapping the model we have built to actual Smalltalk or Java classes to implement it.

This design phase includes designing classes -- in which you decide what your classes will be and which protocols they conform to -- and establishing associations and links between them. Although you can create these relationships nonvisually by using the Relationships Browser, it is probably easier to do so from within the Class Diagrammer.


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