Where is Class Diagram on Visual Studio 2017 community edition

Question

I could not find how to generate existing class diagrams on VS2017 Community Edition. Is it not available to Community Editions. Could you please help how can I generate class diagrams of the project?

Answer 1

I assume you mean class diagrams, not UML diagrams. Starting with Visual Studio 2017, the support for class diagrams is not installed by default. You need to explicitly select it during installation:

1. From the Start menu, launch Visual Studio Installer.
2. Click Modify button for your installation.
3. Switch to Individual components tab, scroll down and select Class Designer. Press Modify button.

The complete procedure with screenshots is described here (because our product VSdocman also relies on this feature if you want to generate class documentation with the diagrams).

Answer 2

I have the impression that you're not talking about the UML diagram feature which was retired indeed. I'm assuming you're talking about the Class Diagram.

First of all as Peter pointed out, make sure this feature is installed in your system.

Then, as answered here, it's a known issue (VOTE!)

As a workaround, From the New File dialog box create a plain XML named Diagram.cd (replace Diagram with your choice), right click the file and select Open With..., and select XML (Text) Editor, then replace its contents with the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ClassDiagram MajorVersion="1" MinorVersion="1">
  <Font Name="Segoe UI" Size="9" />
</ClassDiagram>

Then close the file saving it. When you reopen it normally it should work now.

Answer 3

Community edition doesn't allow you to do it.

Version support for VS 2015 for architecture and modeling tools

Answer 4

Apparently Microsoft has decided to not add that functionality in Visual Studio 2017, for any of the product versions blogs.msdn.microsoft.com