UML Pattern Questions

[mikegill]

As a relative newcomer to EA, I was looking at creating UML patterns for our project. I have a couple of issues as I have not been able to do this successfully.

First when creating the pattern I have to have at least one element set to create otherwise when I try to use the pattern the OK button is greyed out. This might be my misreading of the help file which gives the impression that if I select Instance then 'Creates the pattern element as an instance of an existing element. (this option is available if the pattern element supports this action).'

So if I have existing elements within the model I can't create a diagram from a pattern that will create instances of these as the OK button is not active. If I then re-create the pattern with one or more elements set to create then duplicate elements are created within the model. I thought this might be down to naming scope, i.e. I would have to create the diagram under the package which contains the elements I want to create instances of but this makes no difference.

So this begs the question does using a pattern actually use existing modelling elements because if not the documentation needs to be updated as it is misleading.

Second point is when creating a pattern from a communication diagram, I had hoped that new object instances of existing modelling elements would be created on the diagram however the pattern creates objects unnamed, which rather confirms my suspicion that the pattern ignores existing elements. it would be nice to have this confirmed

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Cheers

Mike Gill