Michael, I'm still thinking about your "draw more, code less" talk and today I got it in my head that a nice way to learn the PlantUML syntax might be to start with existing code (Java, in this case) and have a tool generate the PlantUML for me. I'm sure various IDE's might have a way to do this, but I figured I'd start with the command line: javadoc -private -quiet -J-DdestinationFile=abstract-classes.uml -J-DcreatePackages=false -J-DshowPublicMethods=true -J-DshowPublicConstructors=false -J-DshowPublicFields=true -doclet de.mallox.doclet.PlantUMLDoclet -docletpath ~/bin/plantUmlDoclet.jar -sourcepath . Duck.java FlyBehavior.java FlyNoWay.java FlyWithWings.java MallardDuck.java RubberDuck.java java -jar ~/bin/plantuml.jar -graphvizdot ~/bin/dot -t png abstract-classes.uml It works great! I'll attach a couple UML files and class diagrams. See also http://plantuml.com/doclet.html Phil p.s. Here's the source I'm operating on: https://gist.github.com/pdurbin/f2a34896377b6777acc6 On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Bar-sinai, Michael <mbarsinai(a)iq.harvard.edu> wrote: -- Philip Durbin Software Developer for http://dataverse.org http://www.iq.harvard.edu/people/philip-durbin