Working with association classes

[frank]

Yesterday I had to make a conceptually simple change to a class diagram.  It turned out to be quite a lot of work because of how EA manages association classes.

I had a class A that was an association class between B and C.  I needed to make it an association between B and D instead.

The only way that I could see to do this was to delete and recreate it.  Of course I then had to recreate all links to it and visit each diagram it occurred in  to reset visibility of links not important top that diagram.

Worse yet, I have objects based on class A in various diagrams, and they all lost their association to the class.  I then had to edit each of those diagrams, delete each of those objects, recreate them, and recreate all the appropriate links.

Is there any part of that process that would have been easier had I only known about some helpfull feature already in the product?

Here is thje wish list that I have coming out of yesterday's work:

• The ability to link an existing class to an association, making it an association class.
  
• The ability to break a link between an association class and the association, making it a regular class
  
• The ability to set or change the base class of an object
  

Frank.

[CJ]

G'day Frank,

How about changing the source and target for the association class ("Set Source and Target..." menu in the context menu for the association)?

I'm not sure whether or not that will do the trick ... this kid's still a UML and EA newbie.

[frank]

That would have done it - thanks!  I had not noticed that feature.

Frnk.

[gsparks]

Hi,

Build 578 included the ability to unlink a Class from an Association - its a context menu option on the Class.

It has been possible for some time now to link a Class to an Association  - again a context menu option on the Class

Im not exactly sure what is intended by the 3rd request ... an object's classifier may be set ... but Im not sure this is what you intend...

I hope this helps,

Geoff Sparks

[frank]

That satisfies all three of my requests.  It seems that the funtionality is there, just not where I thought to look for it.  Linking and unlinking a class to/from an association I would have expected to work like adding and removing associations: drag from class to association/select dotted line and press <DEL>.  Changing the classifier I would have expected to see in the object properties.

Thank you for pointing me to the currect location for these functions.

Frank.