I'm using EA7 as the standard in-house design tool. I'd be interested to know when the next iteration is which will fix numerous problems with selection and copy-and-paste in sequence diagrams.
Currently in EA7, copy-and-paste support could be described in the best cases as "variable". For sequence diagrams I'd describe it as "absent", because there are very few situations in which it's possible to copy items. Almost everything requires you do the job again if you want to repeat something.
Suppose I want to copy a sequence diagram from one collaboration to another. Can I? No. Through trial and error, I found I *can* copy it to a package and then drag it to the destination collaboration, but why should that be necessary?
Suppose I want to copy multiple sequence diagrams though. Can I? Fraid not. If you copy a diagram then things owned by the diagram will get copied along with it, but if you've got two dozen diagrams to copy, that's two dozen operations.
The situation is worse in the sequence diagram itself. Can I copy multiple messages? Can I copy a fragment to repeat the operations further down? No to both. If I want to do the same thing twice, I need to create a completely new diagram, put the copied content in there, and then paste that into the first diagram. Fragments can be copied, but it doesn't pick up any of the contents.
There's also a "feature" with fragments, where if you copy an entire sequence diagram, double-clicking on the fragment in the new diagram takes you back to the old diagram. Fine if you want it to do that, but the fragment doesn't let me turn that linkage off.
And sequence diagrams don't handle selection properly either. Try selecting a message or fragment where the resize handles are close to a lifeline, and then try using that resize handle. Can you resize it? No - instead selection changes to the lifeline behind it.
