Crossing the streams

[Emitbrownne]

Hi,
to quote my trainer "imagine you are in ghostbusters and do not cross the streams".
I have only recently been introduced to UML and EA in particular. I realise the confusion of reading it may cause when you cross lines on a diagram.
Is there a way of using a bridge or jump when lines cross, like you would on an Circuit diagram?
Ive had a good root around on the tool and the help but cannot find anything.
Please help???

[Emitbrownne]

Since I have had a number of people read the thread but have not responded, should I assume that this build of EA does not allow for curcuit jumps?

[Tjerk]

Hi Emit(?),

You're right, at this moment there is no way to include the bridge or jump in a relationship. For the moment, you might want to use the "Custom" linestyle and insert (Ctrl-Q) extra linepoints that can be moved around. This way you can manually introduce the bridges you want.

But most of the time, the crossing should not occur. Introduce another diagram to indicate complex relationships if possible.

Tjerk

[jwall]

It would be nice to have jumpers.  Sometimes you need to show a relationship that is difficult to present without crossing lines.   Another thing that would be nice for read-ability would be the ability to set colors or thickness of lines.  It would be nice to color code a diagram with success/failure paths.

[Emitbrownne]

ahhhhh.... Cheers Tjerk..... just create a square jump by using the waypoints......
Im so dim at times....
thanks again.

I'll have a look again and make sure that my diagram is not too complicated (like I said I'm new to this, Im used to programming in assembler and COBOL)..

Ta
Paul   (emit brown is user name taken from back to the future.. sorry sometimes the geek just shine through )

[fwoolz]

Howdy,

Kudos to Tjerk... but creating jumps with 4 breakpoints is tedious; also, my experience with custom lines is that they "self-customize" at times when moving objects- orthogonal breaks go diagonal, etc.  Auto jumps (curved preferred!) would be very nice to have.  As to "not crossing the streams," modestly complex use-case diagrams quickly wind up with many criss-crosses, and EA's fixed-aspect-ratio-label-in-the-middle handling of use case & collaboration ovals doesn't help matters.  As in the Neil Sedaka song (showing my age here), "breaking up is hard to do,"   and sometimes you just need to keep diagram elements together to get the full picture.

Cheers,
Fred Woolsey