Create and simulate your design in minutes with CRC cards

QuickCRC is a software design tool for discovering objects and related information for an object-oriented software development project. QuickCRC automates the CRC card concept of identifying classes, responsibilities and collaborations between objects.

QuickCRC uses a diagram workspace for creating card and scenario objects. It saves a project as an XML file. A card represents the properties of a class including its name, description, superclasses, subclasses, attributes, responsibilities and collaborating objects. A scenario represents a design mechanism defined as a series of steps involving communicating objects. Scenarios can reference cards or other scenarios. Information is entered into the Property dialog of each card and scenario object. Cards and scenarios can also reference external agents defined by the designer to identify system and user interfaces for the software being designed.

QuickCRC provides active simulation of an evolving design. Features include single stepping backwards, forwards or over a called scenario or jumping to a specific location in the scenario stack of a multiple scenario simulation. Its fast and easy to step through your design, just select a scenario and click the Simulate button.

QuickCRC automatically maintains relationships between cards, scenarios and external agents as fluid design changes take place during the early phase of a development project. For example, if a card references undefined subclasses or superclasses, those cards are generated automatically. Other relationships that can be modeled between cards include aggregation and interface implementation. Name changes and cross references between objects get updated instantly. Card and scenario objects can be arranged visually on the diagram by QuickCRC based on user specified criteria to highlight relationships between objects. Card and scenario objects can be separated into different diagrams based on functional areas of a complex design or cut and pasted between different project documents.

Separate diagrams partition a model into subject areas. The contents view allows a designer to navigate between diagrams shown as folder icons that can be opened or closed. From the contents view, a card or scenario can be dragged between diagrams or double-clicked to edit its properties. This makes it easy to locate and modify information as the model grows.

The inheritance graph concisely illustrates the class inheritance structure of the model. It gets generated from information on the CRC cards regardless of how the cards are physically arranged or partitioned between diagrams. Several inheritance graphs can be active for different root classes in the CRC model to focus attention on different parts of a large design. The properties of a card can be viewed or edited by double-clicking its name on the inheritance graph.

CRC models can be verified to locate errors. Information can be listed to a text or HTML report to serve as a coding specification. Models can also be exported to text and then imported to WinA&D; for detailed design or code generation. WinTranslator can be used to automatically generate CRC cards from existing object-oriented code.