

Ask HN: Any free tools (other than pen/paper) to plan application architectures - Sfi81

Background: I primarily code as a hobbyist (with some open-source contributions - I&#x27;ve been coding for over twenty years ) and so haven&#x27;t really come across any structured tools that could help in planning out how to structure applications, help plan visualize and tweak how different parts of the application should interact etc. Googling seems to result in either books on the topic or very domain specific tools like UI mock-up designers etc. Are there any free &amp; flexible tools to help plan-out application architectures?
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RichardZite
Good news @Sfi81, there are some tools for this. If you want to plan ahead and
do that in detail or just sketch around with freehand drawings you have the
ultimate zoomable whiteboard at your service which works in every browser.
Give it a try at [https://ziteboard.com](https://ziteboard.com) Let me know if
you need help with it.

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Sfi81
Thanks! it does looks interesting as I've tried using Prezi for this sort of
stuff before but tripped on its "presentation focused" features whereas this
seems more flexible

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benlaud
Argouml [http://argouml.tigris.org/](http://argouml.tigris.org/)

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Sfi81
Thanks - haven't seen UML before & will take it out for a spin. In your
experience does it have a big learning curve?

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benlaud
A tip for learning UML. If you don't understand what is it talking about, just
ignore it. There are some concept which is just too complicated and not quite
useful. Only pick the concept you like/understand, that is what you will use.

UML is a design language, but not a computer language. You don't need to
follow everything in the standard.

That will learn UML in an easier way.

Personally I think UML is worth to learn. Since it could design an
architecture with using some common building block that many people know. And
those UML tool can draw and manage diagram to save your time.

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codegeek
check out [https://www.draw.io](https://www.draw.io)

They have many visual tools to draw up the app model/architecture.

