Can anyone recommend UML modeling tools that they have used and liked? Rose is somewhat expensive and I'm wondering if there is an inexpensive alternative even with 70% of Rose's capabilities.

Thanks in advance

I used argoUML for a while. Not too bad.

Peter

I've been playing around a bit with MagicDraw and it seems pretty good. You can download a demo for free from
www.magicdraw.com

/Jöns

I've been using MagicDraw 5.0 as well, the professional edition is pretty good. Its certainly nothing like an integrated development environment like Together, but for straight UML modelling I prefer it to rose - rose isn't as UML compliant as I'd like.
other pluses:
The reporting is excellent, and XSL driven, so customisation is easy. I actually prefer MagicDraw's reports to those of together.
Can deal with DDL, so you can roundtrip engineer SQL with stereotyped class diagrams (doesn't have a specific ERD though - although not part of the UML, it would've been nice :)) and extract schema from an existing database via JDBC.
Complete support for UML 1.3, unlike rose.
The roundtrip-engineering doesn't introduce anything 'extra' into your source.


minuses:
The diagramming has the odd bug, as does the code reversing, and the auto-layout should be avoided at all costs!
Reporting is slooooow.
I like how the round-trip engineering works (its manual, so the model and source don't update unless specifically told to), but you have to manage Code Engineering Sets, which can be a bit of a pain with lots of code.

I use MagicDraw daily, and its flawed in places, while others are excellent, especially for the price. But its not a patch on Together (is anything?). PoseidonUml (http://www.gentleware.com/products/index.php3) is pretty good, and probably MagicDraw's nearest rival for price. I just think MagicDraw beats it on the features that I use daily.

Thanks for the recommendations. Great info. Thanks again.

suprisingly micrsoft visio2002 is pretty good. it has support for uml templates and is fairly fast.

rational sux.