Hyperlinking child diagrams

[RainerQ]

Hi,

I have the book "Projektabwicklung mit UML...." from Sparksystems and there they describe how to link a diagram as a child diagram to a element (page 128).

Ok that works, but I can't believe that sparksystems is serious with this way of creating links :-(  

I would suggest to take a look at Modelmaker www.modelmakertools.com to see how easy hyperlinking can be.

Best Regards
Rainer

[Geert Bellekens]

Rainer,

As we don't all own the book you are talking about (and even then, most of us don't know German), maybe you could tell us what it says at page 128?

Geert

[RainerQ]

Hi Gerrt,

no problem  

In "the" book it says:
- select the element to which you want to "hyperlink" a diagram by pressing Alt+g
- drag the diagram to be linked onto the "element" which shall hold the link. This results in moving the diagram below the element.
- the submenu of element "Advanced"-> "Make Composit"
- finally move hyperlinked diagram back to its original position

Sounds very very sofisticated, doesn't it?

Regards
Rainer

[Geert Bellekens]

Rainer,

That is indeed the current procedure if you want to link an existing diagram (that isn't nested under the element as the first diagram) to an element.
It's a little bit easier if you want EA to create a new diagram and link that as the "composite diagram", or if the diagram you want to link to is the "first" diagram nested under the element.

We've been asking for a redesign of the "composite" functionality for quite a while now (search for "composite" in the forum), but we haven't seen any improvement lately.

Maybe if you send in a feature request this might trigger that issue again, and put it a little bit higher on the dev agenda of Sparx.

Geert

[Eve]

Or you can have specialized hyperlinks to any diagram by dragging the target diagram from the project browser to where you want a hyperlink to appear.

[RainerQ]

Hello Simon,

yes, this way of hyperlinking is easy
Thanks for the hint!

But I prefere to have the linking as a "composit" diagram. It would be great if the "Drop Diagram As..." dialog would contain a "Composit" radio button as well. Is there a chance for this in the near future?

Best Regards
Rainer

[KP]

It would be great if the "Drop Diagram As..." dialog would contain a "Composit" radio button as well. Is there a chance for this in the near future?

There is an option: Tools>Options>Diagram>Behavior>Use Automatic SubActivities. With this option set, when you drop as hyperlink onto an activity diagram either an activity, sequence or communication diagram, instead of a hyperlink EA will create a composite activity element that links to the dragged diagram.

[RainerQ]

Hello KP,

thanks for this hint.
But it does not solve my intentions in many cases.

For example, I - just a few minutes ago - had the following scenario:
In a activity diagram, I have a action, which results in a instantiation of a object. Per drag and drop I placed the related class on the diagram. I have a class diagram to this class which I now would like to link to the class element on my activity diagram. Dragging the class diagram from the project browser to the class element gives me the "drop diagram as..." dialog. In my situation I now selected "Hyperlink", but I would have preferred the composite type of linking.

Best Regards
Rainer