how to create UML from the code or jar file.

hi all how can ve create UML diagrams from the existing code as i need to understand the code.
i have tried argoUML but i am not finding how to create from source files.
i have imported my source code ,n then there is no option to save UML diagram or anything.
please let me know if there is any other softwares.

thanks

In my experience, there is no way to automatically create UML from code that would be more helpful in understanding the code than the code itself. The problem is that such automatically generated UML contains as much information as the code itself, just more verbose. Really helpful UML would be an *abstraction* of the code, showing just the important parts - more specifically, those parts that are important for whatever you are currently interested in.

The most effective way to create such UML diagrams is to draw them myself on a white board or napkin while browsing through the code, preferably while pair programming with someone.

i agree with ilja, the problem is, that the diagram generator is kind of stupid and you get overwhelmed by all displayed dependencies. one of the strength of UML diagrams is that you can hide information. but only humans can decide what are the most relevant dependencies between artifacts.

but: what i find very helpful is to see how the dependencies between packages are and where you can browse through the system. i quite like the tool structure101 for that. give it a try, it is much superiour to all UML reverse engineering tools i have used so far.

but what you need consider is that if the codebase is a mess (big ball of unlayerd and cyclic dependencies ball of mud), than you are lost with any tool.

hi all thanks for the replies.