New connectors doesn't show in a diagram

[reketyei1]

Hi,
I apologize for my bad english.

I have EA 13. In my team repository are hundreds of elements and thousands of connectors which represent our systems „current” status. If somebody creates a new connector, it shows in every diagram, which includes the source and target elements. It is big help in our job but regularly we have to do a special diagram which needs to represent our systems „future” status (for example: Information Flow). If somebody finished these types of diagrams we wouldn’t like to modify anymore. My problem is that if somebody creates a new connector then the connector is showed in this „special” diagram and it is big problem for us. How can we solve then if somebody finishes this „special” diagram not to show the new connectors which are created in other diagrams?

rekelyei1

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Hi rekelyei1,
We have done this but it is not trivial.
Firstly, your Connector_IDs need to be monotonically increasing (depending on your configuration they may not be).
Consequently, a new connector will have a Connector_ID larger than the current highest Connector_ID on the diagram.
If you can record the highest Connector_ID at a point in time, you can write a script to hide any connector with a Connector_ID greater than the recorded Connector_ID.

We, therefore, "Freeze" a diagram by recording the highest available Connector_ID in the Title Block (Diagram Notes Element) as a Tag.
We regularly (or on demand) run a script to remove the spurious connectors.  If the diagram actually needs to change, the modeller changes the diagram then "Re-Freezes" the diagram.

It's not perfect, but it works well enough to be a popular function on our human maintained (as opposed to automagically maintained) diagrams.

HTH,
Paolo

[matthew.james]

This sounds like it would be a great feature - freeze a diagram so that it doesn't change layout or add / remove elements and connections. Maybe an extension to the current 'lock' feature but to lock connector visibility as well. When the the diagram is 'unfrozen' there could be an option to add new / missing connectors or not.

I note that this is (or similar) is a repeated request in the forums Does anybody know if this has been raised as a feature request before?

[qwerty]

You should open an own thread for that. Your suggestion doesn't even be connected with the original one. Note that this is a user forum. Sparx employees read it, but more "unofficially".

q.