Software development is a highly collaborative process where software construction is the common goal. It is supported at several stages by computer tools, including software modeling tools. Models are important artifacts of the software development process and constitute the focus of this research, which aims to investigate the communicability of software models produced and consumed with the support of modeling tools. Software model communicability is the capacity that such artifacts have of carrying and effecting a communication process among people, or of being used as an instrument to perform a significant part of such process. Modeling tools have a direct impact in that communicability, since model s producers and consumers interact with those tools throughout the software development process. During that interaction, software models, which are intellectual artifacts, are created, changed, evolved, transformed and shared by people involved in activities of specification, analysis, design and implementation of the software under development. Besides the influence of tools, software modeling also needs to take into consideration previously defined notations as premises for modeling activities. This research is an investigation on how tools and notations influence and support the intellectual process of production and consumption of software models. We have Semiotic Engineering as our guiding theory given the essence of it that is: a careful study of tools people interact with to build, use and publish models through which they coordinate teamwork. The use of models in the software development process is a phenomenon that includes several factors that cannot be isolated from each other. Therefore, we propose a Tool-Notation-People triplet (TNP triplet) as a means of articulation to characterize observed issues about models in the software development. Along with the TNP triplet, we introduce a method that combines semiotic and cognitive perspectives to evaluate software modeling tools, producing data about the emission of designer-user metacommunication, users in this case being software developers. We aim to track potential relations between the human-computer interaction experience of those involved in the software development process while creating/reading/editing models with: (a) the product (types of models) generated in the process; and (b) the interpretations that such models evoke when used effectively in everyday practical situations to communicate and express ideas and understandings. The interest of working with Semiotic Engineering in this research is twofold. First, as an observation lens, the theory offers many resources to investigate and understand the construction and use of computational artifacts, their meanings and roles in the communication process. Second, a better perspective about the complete process that results, ultimately, in the user experience during the interaction with the software is relevant for the theory s own evolution. In other words, this research has produced further knowledge about the communication conditions and mutual understanding of those who, according to the theory, communicate their intent and design principles through the interface, a potentially valuable source of explanations about communication problems in HCI.