Show global timing of a sequence diagram

[araggones]

Hi,
I would like to represent the time spend from the beginning of a sequence diagram till the last action made in it, i.e., show the duration constraint between the first message and the last one of the sequence diagram. Anyone know if this is possible and how to do it? Thank you.

[qwerty]

If timing is important you should probably look into a Timing Diagram. Else you can attach timing constraints in a SD. See the Timing Details in the context menu of a message.

q.

[araggones]

Hi qwerty,
First of all, thank you for your answer, but what you are telling me I already try it. I can't use Timing Diagram because for me, the messages are really important. Also I defined timing constraints in the SD but I can't get what I want.
For example, you can see in the image that is not possible to show the duration constraint between Msg1 and Msg2 (and I don't understand why).
For every message I defined the parameter "duartion constraint between messages" to see visually what can I show exactly and, for that reason, you can see the lines with the {time(Msg#)}.
Finally, what I really want to show is the red line, i.e. the total time from the first message till the last one. There is any way to do that? Thank you very much.

[qwerty]

Well, to show the whole time you could create a drawing for a timeline externally (e.g. in Visio), save that as image, import it in EA and create a boundary with that alternate image. A workaround but the only that comes to mind...

q.

[araggones]

I don't understand why this feature is not available in EA but ok. Anyway, thank you for your help, I really appreaciate your effort.

[Uffe]

Hello,

"Constraint between messages" requires two messages, and in your case Actor1 is only involved in one. If you draw a message back from Object1 to Actor1 at the end of the sequence, you can add the constraint to Msg1.

You can't place this message at the exact same height as Msg5 (since they are part of a sequence and must therefore be strictly one above the other), but you can place it close enough to fool the eye.

You can also hide the last message connector, but this doesn't work very well -- it will reappear when you reopen the diagram. And anyway hiding connectors is Bad Modelling (TM).

HTH,

/Uffe

[araggones]

Hi,
I can see now that the only way to show the global time of a sequence diagram is cheating a little bit
Thank you for your reply.