What experience have people had with modeling tools? Rational Rose is absurdly expensive for an independent developer, and unless absolutely desperate, I can't see forking out that kind of cash. There are literally dozens of others (see http://www.objectsbydesign.com/tools/umltools_byCompany.html) ranging in price from $0 to about $4,000. There are a handful under $100.

Right now I'm trying to model by hand on white boards, which works pretty well, but having to copy all the whiteboard stuff onto paper is a pain, so I'm looking for a reasonably priced, solid tool. Sometimes you get what you pay for, but sometimes you can find a genuinely great tool for a great price (as I've found in Help Authoring Tools). I'd like to hear anybody's experiences.

I don't think I care too much about auto-code generation at this point (I don't see how it helps if you're using a framework), or even reverse engineering features (though that would be nice to document existing systems). I'm certain that I want sequence diagram capability, and preferably sequence diagrams which interact with the class diagrams to add properties and methods.

Thanks!