Suggestion: 1..* (for existing elements) quick linking

[Ian Kirwan]

(Possibility of similar or same suggestion already existing accepted. Apologies in advance for duplicate suggestions and existing capabilities that already cover the suggestion.)

Suggest allowing 1 to many quick linking between existing elements, while allowing the user to select the directionality and stereotype of the links as same for all or specify each. I believe this would improve user productivity. Very useful for block diagrams of various sorts including class diagrams.

[skiwi]

Can you explain how you envisage a user carrying out this action in EA please?

[Ian Kirwan]

Suggested mechanism:

Open a diagram with an existing set of elements that we want to create relationships for.

Select the set of elements that we want connected to a single element, right click for context menu, select 'Link To...' (just invented that). Then select the target element(s) that they all link to. Pop up dialog asks for the type of link (a list of recently used, preferred or most common perhaps (with respect to type, directionality, cardinality, stereotype etc):

Result (had to use an image from the net so look at the middle rows):

[Uffe]

So what you're talking about is connecting many-to-one. This could be achieved by extending the quick linker functionality as follows.

1) At present, the quick linker is disabled when multiple elements are selected. Enable it.
2) When a "multi-selection" quick link is dropped onto an element, find the set of allowed connectors for each selected element type/stereotype (in the relevant diagram type) as per normal. Create a menu with the intersection of those sets, ie only include those connectors that all selected element types allow.
3) Create the selected connectors.
4) If the quick link is dropped on an empty space, do the same but with creation of elements too, of course.

Doable in theory. Practice, who knows. There are probably all sorts of special cases lurking down there.

While this function might be useful in certain situations I don't see a huge use for it.
I'll give it a +0.25.


/Uffe