Various questions / issues

[ds27680]

Hello,

I am a newbie to EA so my questions might be plain dumb. However I need help and I hope there is someone who can provide it... I am using a recent trial version of the EA for the moment.

Here it is:

1. I have large class diagrams. I splitted them into smaller ones since I want them to be more usable. Now I want to make a diagram that contains all the classes from the smaller diagrams to serve as a "big picture" diagram. Here I will not need the details of the classes (operations, attributes) compartments since the user can look at the small diagram for the details. I hide them all from the diagram properties. I would expect that their compartments will be hidden. Still the classes seem to insist on keeping an empty compartment to display ( one compartment that contains the class name, and another one that is empty ). I just want the class to look as a simple rectangle containing the class name ( to save paper space ). Is there any way of achieving this without resizing the class element by hand?
2. In the C++ sources I have class declarations of the following type:  

class DLL_EXPORT CClassName { /*...*/ };

where DLL_EXPORT is a macro that basically expands to some storage class modiffier ( in this case _declspec(dllexport) or _declspec(dllimport) depending on the actual situation )

Importing this source code in EA will result in a class with the name DLL_EXPORT. Furthermore if several classes exist in the same header with this storage class modiffier only the first one is imported. To obtain the correct behaviour i made a copy of the header in another folder and replaced DLL_EXPORT with the null string and then performed import in EA. Still this, is no solution, since I have very large projects. It did the job for me for the moment though...

I'm not certain this seems like a bug to me but it is also possible that I am missing something... So any comments on this would help.

3. I assigned keys for zoom in / zoom out since as I said I work on large diagrams and zooming in / out comes in handy for me (more usefull and easy than scrolling). So now I can use Num + and Num - for zoom in zoom out. Still it would help if the zoom would work around the current mouse position... This way I could place the mouse over the class I want to view in more detail and zoom in for instance. Zooming as it is now seems unintuitive for me (If I am at a certain zoom level I can not anticipate what will be visible if I zoom in). Is there a way of doing this currently in EA?

4. Why does the 'Autosize selected element' ( Alt + Z ) depend on zoom level ( zoom must be between 60% and 100% ). It is quite annoying for me. It would seem to me that this functionality should have nothing to do with the zoom level.

For the moment I would be happy if I could have these problems solved. Other problems can wait... :-)

All the best && a nice day

[thomaskilian]

Not much help, but I can say the following:
1. CTRL+a (select all) ALT+Z (resize) / Auto-layout
2. no idea
3. Supported. Currently you have to shift a lot to find the right position.
4. I agree that this limitation seems to be ridiculous

[sargasso]

Re 4: Probably because once the contents have to be "greeked" the resize becomes problematic.
bruce

[KP]

I think the answer to 2 is to add it to the list of known macros in "Configuration | Language Macros".

[Eve]

1. Add all of your classes to the diagram.
Open the diagram properties and check "Hide Attributes" and "Hide Operations". Then follow Thomas' suggestion.

2. KP is right about this.

[ds27680]

Hello all,

First of all, thank you for your replies.

1. The sugestion that thomas and simon give for 1 coincides with the way I was tring to solve it. I hide from the diagram properties the attributes, operations and then select all followed by Alt + Z. I was not auto laying out the diagram though. I tried now but this does not work. Here is the result with Auto-layout added at the end of the sequence of steps on a small portion of the diagram.



As it can be seen on this image the resize (Alt-Z) does not help me achieve what I want.

Some other issues I noticed in the meantime:

The auto-resize (Alt-Z) does not resize all classes corectly ( see the CBuilderLookupTable class the C is out of the class box ) even if the zoom level is between 60% an 100%... Still I see no point in this requiremet by the way :-). After Auto-Layout template classes overlap slightly with the other ones.

2. Thank you KP and simonm. I added it to language macros and it worked so this is helpful.

3. I am sorry Thomas I am affraid I do not understand what you want to say. I do not see how this is supported. Can you please detail a little bit more on this if possible?

4. I still consider this to be nonsense. It is similar to Microsoft Paint telling you it can not resize an image because you are not between the correct zoom steps...

[mikewhit]

The DLLEXPORT issue was previously covered here: http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=general;action=display;num=1103110378  
so it pays to do a search, there are nuggets of gold in there !

Saving the original diagram image as a PNG or GIF would probably give you a much smaller image file size, since there are large areas of the same colour - espcially if you convert to 256 colours in Paint first of all.

Once it's been through JPEG, colours are not always identical and hence don't compress well.

[ds27680]

Hello mikewhit,

Thanks for the sugestions. Actually I searched before posting. Maybe I was not very inspired when I searched since I found no answers to my problems. So I hope you will forgive me... :-).

As for the image size I agree with you. Probably a 50 K image will be a problem for dial-uppers compared to a 30K image... I unfortunately do not have anything else besides Microsoft Paint on my computer for the moment. I had Gimp installed but I do not have it anymore. Microsoft Paint doesn't do a very good job when you save as gif. So my appologies go to dial-uppers.

Still this sugestion does not help me with my problems.

[thomaskilian]

3. I am sorry Thomas I am affraid I do not understand what you want to say. I do not see how this is supported. Can you please detail a little bit more on this if possible?  

Sorry. I meant that I support your request to have such functionality