However, the free edition does not include four of the five major functional areas available in Rose 4.x or Rose 98: use case, sequence, collaboration, and state diagrams. It is a good learning tool, and may be sufficient for smaller, one-person projects, but is inadequate for large, enterprise-level projects.

So why not use a tool like Visio (which includes UML symbols) and a little OLE automation to create your own, less expensive tool for visual modeling? Well, first I'd debate with you whether it is actually less expensive. By the time you programmatically mimic even a small percentage of Rose 98 functionality, you could have bought the tool itself. If you want to use it in a one-person project to save money, it might be justified.

Visio templates could model the class structure alongside Rose 98. But you'll need to add default code generation and reverse generation capabilities. Visio is a generalized drawing tool. It could handle custom code generation based on an API, and build a comprehensive object model specific to the UML diagram, but a lot of that functionality will have to be built from scratch. And while Visio's UML Semantics Checker could handle some of the validation and analysis necessary, Rational's capabilities are much more extensive.