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PODo you use Styrofoam balls to model your systems?
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  1. PODo you use Styrofoam balls to model your systems?
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    copied!<blockquote> <p>[Objective-C]</p> <p><strong>Do you still use Styrofoam balls to model your systems, where each ball represents a class?</strong></p> <p><strong>Tom Love:</strong> We do, actually. We've also done a 3D animation version of it, which we found to be nowhere near as useful as the Styrofoam balls. There's something about a physical, conspicuous structure hanging from the ceiling right in the middle of a development project that's regularly updated to provide not only the structure of the system that you're building, but also the current status of each one of the classes.</p> <p>We've done it on 19 projects the last time I've counted. One of them was 1,856 classes, which is big - actually, probably bigger than it should be. It was a big commercial project, so it needed to be somewhat big.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596515170" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Masterminds of Programming</em></a></p> <hr> <p>It is the first time I've read or heard about using styrofoam balls to model classes.<br> Is that a commonly used technique? And, how does that sort of modeling help us to design better the system? </p> <p>If you have any photos to share which can show us how the classes are represented it'd be great!</p> <hr> <p><strong>Update:</strong> So, it seems that the <em>material</em> most people use is the paper. Styrofoam balls are actually <em>oddballs</em>, not a commonly used technique.</p> <p>Noticeable techniques:</p> <ul> <li>"paper plates and string" modeling, <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2896197/do-you-use-styrofoam-balls-to-model-your-systems/2930087#2930087">NealB</a></li> <li>Post-it Notes on a whiteboard, <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2896197/do-you-use-styrofoam-balls-to-model-your-systems/2952616#2952616">Jason</a></li> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-responsibility-collaboration_card" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Class-Responsibility-Collaboration</a> cards, <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2896197/do-you-use-styrofoam-balls-to-model-your-systems/2954476#2954476">duffymo</a></li> <li>Sheets of ruled paper taped to the wall, <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2896197/do-you-use-styrofoam-balls-to-model-your-systems/2961998#2961998">AMissico</a></li> </ul> <p><br> Thank you all for the very good answers.</p>
 

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