CRC cards offer a quick, flexible technique for discovering object classes, members and relationships in an object-oriented program.Detailed software design and code generation is often driven by UML class diagrams.
CRC cards, dictionary data, class diagrams and code are complementary and interchangeable representations of the same project information.
Automated tools make it easy to create one representation from another. If you've created CRC cards with QuickCRC, choose the List Dictionary Entries command to export data to a text file.
You can also import dictionary information from a text file to create CRC cards. That file can originate from a class modeling tool or be extracted from source code using WinTranslator.
Create a project in WinA&D that includes a Dictionary and Class document. Use the Import Dictionary command to bring in the data created from your CRC cards.
Alternatively, the List Dictionary command in WinA&D sends your dictionary information to a text file.
Generate a class diagram from dictionary information with one menu command. The diagram shows classes, attributes, operations and relationships between classes.
Virtually everything about the presentation of a class diagram is customizable. Colors can be assigned to class members. Class members can be shown or hidden from the diagram based on member type, access characteristics (public, private, protected, etc.) or other user-defined rules.
The designer controls the level of detail (data type, arguments, access, etc.) presented on each diagram.
Class attribute and operation details can be defined in a class model, then used to create code by clicking the Generate Code button. Code is linked to the model and presented in WinA&D's Browse window.
WinA&D is an integrated tool for software models, requirements management, code generation and project reports. Need a PDF containing all project diagrams? There's a command for that too.
About The Screen Shots
The screen shots on this page were produced with QuickCRC and WinA&D running on a Windows XP computer. Click any scaled image to see it full size. QuickCRC and MacA&D on Mac OS X have similar capabilities.