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Hi there =)
I guess this all depends on the scale of your project.
For small projects that only yourself or few others attend to, paper drawings and good code documentation usually suffice. If desired (for example, if noone can read your handwriting), you might as well use some tool for modelling.
For larger scale projects (both referring to time and people involved) it is better to plan ahead as much as possible to avoid costly mistakes and code rewrites. Consequently, some sort of modelling is definately required before the first code line should be written.
However, I guess it's really just a matter of taste which modelling language or schema you use. Since UML is pretty much self-explaining, and also some kind of standard for modelling, I would just stick to that one.
The same goes for a modelling IDE. Stick with whatever seems most appropriate to your needs. Needs in this context, I think, mostly consist of a user-friendly interface.
I don't see why using an external tool would prove to be a problem, apart from that you need to task-switch for modifying modelled things. Also, I guess modelled things should not be changed too often anyways. (This is why you actually model: so that you have an exact plan of what to do, to start with).
The only exception to the above I can see is if you find some tool to automatically generate code from your models, and vice versa.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
- Wernaeh
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