How can links / associations cross behind symbols?

[EricP]

Whenever any association / generalization / aggregation / etc. connects two symbols / diagrams, and another symbol / diagram is in the way, it seems that the lines always cross in front of the symbol.  How can I go about making the line cross behind the symbol?  It would help make the diagram a lot neater.  I tried the described way to make something appear in front of or behind something else and it doesn't work for association lines.

[KP]

How would you tell the difference between one line that goes behind a symbol, and two lines that connect to the symbol?

BTW: The answer to your question is you can't.

[EricP]

How would you tell the difference between one line that goes behind a symbol, and two lines that connect to the symbol?

Uhhh ... oh, yeah...  

[Makulik]

You should avoid crossing connectors in general ...

[EricP]

You should avoid crossing connectors in general ...

Good morning, Makulik.

In general, you're right, but often that's not so easy.  When I model class diagrams, I tend to also model the things that go into the classes, like structs and unions, as separate entities with aggregation links to the classes.  So if I have a struct that goes into half the classes in the model, you can see how sometimes it's hard (and usually way more bother than it's worth) to avoid crossing connectors.

[RoyC]

You could take a copy of your diagram and play with the Layout Pallete window on it, to see how EA would position elements to avoid cross-overs. You can find information on the options by searching for Layout Pallete Window in the Help index.

[EricP]

You could take a copy of your diagram and play with the Layout Pallete window on it, to see how EA would position elements to avoid cross-overs. You can find information on the options by searching for Layout Pallete Window in the Help index.

Good evening, Roy.

If you mean Diagrams->Layout Diagram... I wish that I could get that to work but I have been using EA for reverse engineering for years (making class diagrams out of directories full of .h files) and I have never been able to get Layout Diagram to work... it usually leaves the diagram in a bigger mess than I started with.  In the case of this project, on which I'm doing a forward design for a change, I tried it just now and it still makes an awful mess out of my diagrams.

I'll do a little more research and see if I'm missing some option that makes it work, but my guess is I'll have to continue to pretent that Layout Diagram doesn't exist.

[EricP]

You can find information on the options by searching for Layout Pallete Window in the Help index.

I asked Help for "Layout Pallete" and got "No topics found" so I went back to asking it for "Layout Diagram" and got 26 hits, only a few having anything to do with auto-layout of diagrams.

The first one said to go to the Diagram Layout Options dialog, to change the setups for Layout Diagram.

uhhh... WHAT Diagram Layout Options dialog?

I have looked everywhere I can think of including all through Help and I can't find any Diagram Layout Options dialog anywhere.

[RoyC]

Which search were you using? If you type Layout Pallete in the Index in the integrated Help (with the product installer) it goes straight to the Layout Pallete Window.

EDIT: (and Head Hit) - it would be good iff I cood spel propalee.

The index entry is Layout Pallete, but the facility is called the Layout Palette.  My profound apologies.

It's Friday. Gimme a beea. No, a BEEA. Oh, why doesn't anyone understand me?

Anyway, here is the topic in the web help:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/uml_tool_guide/modeling_with_uml/layout_diagrams.html

This is a tool to lay out selected areas of a diagram (or, for a very simple diagram, the whole thing). Please excuse the first screen dump - it has drifted to the left for some reason.

The link goes to the first topic in a set. The last topic in the set covers how to lay out a diagram automatically. To actually lay out a diagram, you select a menu option and it just does it. To tell the system how to layout the diagram, you set options on the Diagram Layout Options dialog. The topic tells you how to access and use that dialog. Here is a direct link:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/uml_tool_guide/modeling_with_uml/layoutadiagram.html

What release of EA are you using? In the earlier releases it wasn't terribly easy to get into this facility, but for release 7.5 we opened it up and made it really good.

[EricP]

The index entry is Layout Pallete, but the facility is called the Layout Palette.  My profound apologies.

Good morning, Roy.

No problem.  I thought maybe "pallete" was the Australian spelling  .  So I tried 'em both and got no hits on either.

What release of EA are you using? In the earlier releases it wasn't terribly easy to get into this facility, but for release 7.5 we opened it up and made it really good.

Currently using 7.1 build 831.  I've been trying really hard to note that fact promimently at the beginning of any of these threads I participate in, but looking back I see I neglected to do that this time... sorry about that.  I generally don't upgrade my tools in the middle of a project unless there is a reason, hence still using 7.1 which has worked very well indeed for this project.

Incidentally I was able to take my diagrams and arrange them manually so that at least the links don't cross other symbols... went a lot easier than I thought it would.  So, problem is solved for now.  Thanks to all...

[«Midnight»]

The feature^* being referred to here (by various spellings) is only available from EA 7.5 forwards.

[edit]^* Specifically the Layout Palette. Roy makes an important point below. Please read his post before taking action...[/edit]

[RoyC]

The Layout Palette is indeed only available from release 7.5 onwards.

However, the automatic diagram layout facility has been around for a long time. In release 7.1 build 831 we had a good look at the Diagram Layout Options dialog and we put a more detailed explanation in the Help on what each option achieves. To access the dialog, double-click on the diagram background to display the Properties dialog, select the Diagram tab and then click on the Set Layout Style button.

To display the option descriptions, click on the Help button on the Diagram Layout Options dialog.