Refactoring support and class diagrams are on our list of features to tackle for future releases.

The reason we don't have it now is that delivering a robust feature in this category requires very good integration between the compiler and the development environment; which is something we currently lack. We started implementing the class diagram feature for C++ in VS2005 but we quickly concluded that we will never make it robust enough to be of good value using our current architecture so we pulled it out.

Instead of building a half-working feature on top of what we have, we decided to take the route of building a good compiler foundation for addressing this class of features. Once we have this foundation, we fully plan on building refactoring tools on top of it. Planning is currently underway for building this solid foundation.

The good news is that we expect 3rd party plug-ins to fill the gap that we have until we ship an implementation of our own. The not-so-good news is that we will not have our own implementation in time for our next release (Orcas).

Thanks,
Tarek Madkour
Lead Program Manager
Microsoft Visual C++