Please note : This help page is not for the latest version of Enterprise Architect. The latest help can be found here.

Sub-Shapes

Shapes can contain - and be composed of - other shapes.

Subshape Layout:

To set the layout type, the layoutType attribute must be set in the initialization attributes section of the script; in other words, before any of the methods are called. Valid values for this attribute are:

•LeftRight - Shapes with leftright layout position subshapes side by side, with the first added on the left, and subsequent subshapes to the right
•TopDown - TopDown places subshapes in a vertical arrangement, with the first shape added to the top and subsequent shapes added below
•Border - Border layout requires an additional argument to the addsubshape method to specify which region of the containing shape the subshape is to occupy: N, E, S, W or CENTER; each region can only be occupied by one subshape
 
A subshape that is assigned to the E or W region must have its preferredwidth attribute specified in its declaration and, similarly, subshapes added to N or S must have their preferredheight attribute set; in this case, the values for these attributes are treated as static lengths and do not scale glyphs

 
For example:

shape main

{

 layouttype="topdown";

 setfillcolor(0,0,255);

 rectangle(0,0,100,100);

 addsubshape("sub",50,100,20,0);

 addsubshape("sub",50,100,30,-100);

 addsubshape("sub",50,100,40,-200);

 addsubshape("sub",50,100,50,-300);

 

 shape sub

 {

         setfillcolor(0,255,0);

         ellipse(0,0,100,100);

 }

}

 

The above script provides the following shape:

subshapeexample