Chapter 2: Anatomy of a Project Window
A UMLStudio project window resides inside the UMLStudio main window.
The main window is an MDI
(Multiple Document Interface) frame, capable of containing multiple project windows.
The top of the main window contains three things:
- The menubar which comprises the pull-down menus for issuing commands.
- The main toolbar which contains push buttons for the frequently-used commands.
- The miscellaneous toolbar which contains a set of
non-template based tools, and commands and popup menus for manipulating drawables.
- The custom toolbar which contains the tools provided by the
current template and 3 edit modes. The definition of each of these tools and
its associated icon is provided by the project template.
The rest of the main window is occupied by the project windows. A project window visualize the
project and is divided into three
panes:
- The explorer pane provides a hierarchical view of the project in form of a tree.
You can quickly locate and view a model in the project by navigating this tree.
- The drawing pane is where the drawing for the current model appears. A drawing displayed here
can be directly edited through mouse operations and menu commands.
- The info pane provides four pages of useful information about the project and the current model.
These pages are accessed via the tabs appearing at the top of the pane. The pages are:
- Lister page which provides a summary of the project master entities.
- Annotation page which provides a quick means of viewing/editing the currently-selected object's annotation.
- Locater page which provides a miniature version of the drawing displayed in the drawing pane.
- Matrix page which controls the size of a model as a matrix of printable pages.
- Reference Project page which displays the masters in the currently loaded reference project.
The explorer pane provides a hierarchical view of the project in form of a tree. The root of the tree is
always called Project. The name of the project is denoted by the project file (e.g., Mail.pro is the
project file for the Mail project). The project file name appears in the window title bar.
Under Project you will always find 5 folders:
You cannot directly change these folders (e.g., you cannot rename Models to something else). However,
you can modify the contents of the folders.
The Models folder contains all the user-defined models that comprise the project. When you define a new
model, its icon appears in this folder. For a new project, this folder will always contain a blank model
called Untitled.
The models in this folder are called custom models, because the user creates them using the custom tools
provided by the template. For brevity, however, we usually simply call them models.
The models are arranged as a hierarchy. You can view any of these models by simply selecting it.
The model appears instantly in the drawing pane, ready for editing.
You can add new models to this tree in one of two ways:
- To add a root-level model (i.e., a model that appears directly inside the Models folder, choose
the Model:New command.
- To add a model as a child of another model, explode a place entity inside the model using the
Model:Explode command.
You can cut, copy, paste, and delete models using the commands in the Edit menu.
You can bring up the property sheet for a model using Edit:Properties or by double-clicking the model icon.
You do this, for example, to change the name of a model.
The Template folder contains the definition of the notation template that the project is based on. The
name of this folder is set to the notation template file name, which is of the form name.not, where not
stands for notation (e.g., UML2.1.not).
The name <Internal> denotes UMLStudio’s internal notation template. This template is hard-coded into
UMLStudio and therefore has no corresponding template file. It ensures that you can still use UMLStudio
even when you have no template files available.
Inside the Template folder you will find 3 subfolders:
- The Diagrams subfolder contains the diagram types supported by the template. Selecting a diagram
type icon will display the property sheet for that diagram type.
- The Links subfolder contains the link tools supported by the template.
- The Places subfolder contains the place tools supported by the template.
Each (link or place) tool is defined by a tool model. A tool model is very similar to a custom model,
except that it is defined using only the primitive tools and not the custom tools themselves. Whereas a
custom model can be defined using the primitive as well as the custom tools.
A tool model may represent:
- A standard tool. In each template there are 10 standard link tools and 14 standard place tools.
The names of the standard tools appears in bold.
- An extra tool. These are provided in addition to the standard tools.
- A stereotype tool. These provide variations of standard/extra tools, and appear as their
children.
You can view any of these tool models by simply selecting it. This causes the tool edit mode as well as
the corresponding tool icon in the custom toolbar to be selected. The tool model appears instantly in the
drawing pane, ready for editing. Conversely, if you select the tool edit mode as well as any of the custom
tools in the custom toolbar, the corresponding tool model will be selected in this folder and displayed
in the drawing pane.
You can edit a tool model, create a new one, or delete one that you have created.
You can also create, delete, copy, cut, or paste the primitives inside a tool model as usual.
You can bring up the property sheet for a tool model using Edit:Properties or by double-clicking the tool
model icon. You do this, for example, to change the name of a tool model.
The Generated folder contains three subfolders which are initially empty for a new project:
When you generate code/documents/etc. for your models (using the
Tools:Generate Code,
Tools:GenerateDocumentation,
or Tools:Run Other Script command),
an icon appears in the corresponding subfolder for each of the generated files.
The Reversed folder contains the last set of files that were reverse engineered.
The Scripts folder also contains three subfolders:
- CodeGen
- DocGen
- Other
- Import
- Export
- RevEng
- Task
Each of these folders contains the script files used for, respectively, code generation, document
generation, other generations, data import, data export, reverse engineering, and common tasks.
The drawing pane is where the drawing for the current model appears. When you select a model in the
explorer pane, its drawing appears here. You can directly edit a drawing through mouse operations
and menu commands.
A drawing consist of drawables. Each drawable is created using one of the tools in the toolbars.
Drawables are divided into 5 categories:
- Primitive drawables, which may be text box, line, rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polyline, or polygon.
- Link drawables, which are used to connect two places.
- Place drawables, which represent entities.
- Tag drawables, which represent comments attached to places.
- Message drawables, which represent messages attached to links.
You create a drawable by selecting its tool from a toolbar and clicking and/or dragging in the drawing
pane.
You select a drawable by positioning the mouse pointer on it and clicking the mouse button.
When a drawable is successfully selected, a set of solid knobs appear around it. You can select multiple
drawables by holding the shift key down when selecting additional drawables, or by dragging through them.
You deselect drawables by clicking in a blank area.
You drag a set of drawables by first selecting them and then dragging any one of them.
You resize a drawable by first selecting it and then dragging any of its knobs.
You edit the text in a drawable, by first clicking inside the text and then typing.
You can cut, copy, paste, and delete drawables freely within a drawing or between drawings.
You can view a drawable’s properties by double-clicking it or selecting it and choosing
Edit:Properties.
You can explode a place drawable by double-clicking it, while holding the control key down, or selecting
it and then choosing Model:Explode.
You can pan and zoom the drawing pane using the commands in the View menu
or their equivalents in the main toolbar.
You can re-arrange drawables using the commands in the Arrange menu.
You can change the looks of drawables using the commands in the Looks menu
or their equivalents in the main toolbar.
The info pane provides four pages of useful information about the project and the current model. These
pages are accessed via the tabs appearing at the top of the pane. To switch to a page, click on its tab.
The lister page provides a summary of the project master entities. This page is arranged as a table of 6
columns. Each master entity is unique and is described by a row of this table.
The Name column specifies the master name. The Kind column specifies the master kind as determined by
the place tool used to create it. Two masters of different kinds may share the same name and are still
considered unique. The Namespace column specifies an optional namespace for the master. Two masters of
the same name and kind are still unique if they belong to two different namespaces. The #Refs column
specifies the number of references to the master (i.e., the number of place drawables that refer to
this master). The Submodel column specifies the name of the submodel for the master (if any). The last
column specifies the master’s unique internal ID.
You can select one or more masters in the table by clicking on the master name (use control or
shift for multiple selection).
You can copy and paste masters in the same table or between the tables of two projects.
You can cut or delete masters, provided they have a #Refs value of zero.
You can view the properties of a master by double-clicking its name, or by selecting it and choosing
Edit:Properties.
You can sort the master table using any of its columns by clicking on the column heading.
You can resize the table columns by dragging the vertical border between the column headings.
The annotation page displays the list of attributes and methods for the currently-selected class
(including attributes and methods for the base classes). A check box appears next to each attribute/method
which, when ticked, causes that attribute/method to be displayed within the class.
The fully qualified name of the class itself appears at the top of the list (in red). The check box
next to this entry provides a quick means of toggling the Annotate flag of the whole class.
When it is ticked, any ticked attributes/methods are displayed within the class. Otherwise, they are
all hidden.
You can also quickly view the properties of an attribute/method (even for base classes) by double-clicking
its row in the list.
The locater page provides a miniature version of the drawing displayed in the drawing pane. The locater
is useful for large drawings that cannot be viewed at once in the drawing pane.
Within the locater page, a red rectangle denotes the visible region in the drawing pane. You can
drag this rectangle to scroll the drawing pane view to the desired position.
The matrix page provides a means of specifying the size of the current model’s drawing. The drawing size
is specified as a matrix of cells.
The cell size is proportional to the actual printed paper size, as determined by the paper size selected
in File:Page Setup.
The black cells in the matrix denote the current drawing’s size (the default is a single cell).
You can resize a drawing by clicking any of the cells in the matrix. All cells from the top-left hand
corner up to and including the clicked cell are selected. Alternatively, you can drag from cell to cell
to get the same effect.
Resizing a drawing does not affect the drawables in the drawing; it simply shrinks or expands the
available real estate for the drawing.
You can obtain the best matrix size by choosing Model:Best Page Matrix.
This chooses enough cells to tightly enclose the drawing.
The reference page displays the masters in the currently loaded reference project. You can open a reference project using
File:Open Reference Project.
You can drag masters from this page and drop them into your drawing to create places. This serves as an easy
way of making centrally defined classes (e.g., your corporate object model) available to all projects.
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