why we need to declare a class abstract??

[Puneet Mittal]

hi please tell me what is the need of declaring a class abstract???

[Campbell Ritchie]

I presume you have read this FAQ? You don't "need" to declare a particular class abstract, but there are occasions when you want a "place" in your inheritance hierarchy where you don't want anybody creating instances, or you might have methods which will have such variability that you want them abstract too.
Example

    [I]Vehicle[/I]
   /    |   \
  /     |    \
Bus    Car   Truck

Now, some behaviour of buses and cars might be the same, some might be different, but you don't want any "Vehicle" objects. So you would probably declare Vehicle abstract. I think, you write the name of abstract classes in italics in a UML diagram.

[camilo lopes]

when you want to leave that a subclass implements the methods abstract.