Visio and Visual Studio 2005 (Standard)

Visio and Visual Studio 2005 (Standard)

• Jumanji_24

  Hi Kurt,
  The "Export as Image" feature in the class designer is specifically designed to include class diagrams as part of your documentation.
  
  Actually the cool thing here is that your documentation will have diagrams that reflect the current state of the code!  Visio diagrams only take a snapshot of your code when you reverse engineer it.  You may want to look at the blog article Using Class Diagrammer to document your code.
  
  You may also want to take a look at this webcast.
  
  Cheers,
  Ramesh Rajagopal.
  Class Designer Team.
  
  

• Sriteja

  yup you MUST install Vs 2003 to use VISIO Enterprise Architect. You could install both VS on your system, but its still not gonna let you integrate it with vs 2005. The class diagrams are more richer in VS 2005 as it supports all the bells n whistles the programming languages deliver.
  
  
  

• Franz Muheim

  ...or you might want to check out Sparx Enterprise Architect Professional at http://www.sparxsystems.com.au which offers reverse-engineering of C# 2.0 into UML 2.0 diagrams at a measly US$200.
  

• Michael Dye from Dyetech

  I agree that the new Class Diagram feature in VS 2005 is very impressive but I can only export the results as a picture. I was hoping to export as a Visio diagram that could then be used as part of an overall documentation. Looks like we will have to bite the bullet and go to the Professional version.
  
  Thanks to all for your quick responses,
  
  Kurt

  
  

• Nirav Shah - MSFT

  It seems that the only way to have reverse engineering in Visual Studio 2005 is to purchase the Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition.
  
  I would like to have the Visio Professional product, which I already own, integrate directly into the Visual Studio 2005 (Standard Edition) without having to upgrade my current edition of Visual Studio 2005 to the Professional Edition.
  
  Any hope of doing so
  
  thanks,
  
  Kurt
  

• SMAC

  he he.. i doubt thats gonna happen. With the new features of the class designer and the rest of the Team System edition features, i think they [MSFT] wants you to upgrade to get the full benefits of these new tools.
  
  Even if they decided to do so, my guess is they would pick the visio enterprise architect version to be integrated and not the professional.
  

• intromicko

  Sorry, but the fact that you have class designer built in to Visual Studio 2005, while a nice feature is a cop out.

  I do really like the class designer, but it is limited. For example, I have been using Visio for Enterprise Architects for a couple of years now, and what is really nice is that it generates my static structures that I can then take and build sequence diagrams. The sequence diagram is a critical design aspect in my opinion that goes a long way in depicting component/service interaction.

  I will gladly pay $200 for the Sparx product as there is more to design than merely pretty class diagrams.

  The ability to reverse engineer VS 2005 types into Visio should have been a given, especially with the focus on Office integration that is all the rage lately. People Ready, remember

  Rick

  
  
  

• Mr.Kris

  Hi there, Do you mean use Visio itself to reverse engineer an application created in VS 2005
  
  i was just looking into the class designer for Visual Studio 2005 today so i tot i'd have a go at your question. Hopefully im not off topic to what u wanted to know. 
  
  In VS 2005 [not sure abt standard edition, im using Professional trial] you can reverse engineer a component through the solution explorer context menu. You need not use visio at all to generate the class diagrams of the components within your system.
  
  Visio designs will not be easily converted to be used within VS 2005. What you would have to do is, use the code generation feature of visio [its in enterprise architect ver, dont think its in visio standard] and then copy the code it created into vs 2005 where you can then generate the new class diagrams through "a click of a button" The new class diagrams in vs 2005 are fully integrated to your source code now. Changes to the code / GUI is reflected on the fly.

  
  

• Interociter

  I also have the Visio Enterprise Architect Edition (2003) BUT it will not install on the machine where I have Visual Studio 2005 installed. It needs to have Visual Studio 2003 installed.
  
  Nice run around...

  
  
• Visio and Visual Studio 2005 (Standard)