Header/Footer, but on diagrams, not exported documentation.

[Miguel]

I've looked around, but I can't find a way to put a header and footer inside the diagram frame in EA.  I'm not talking about in the generated documentation, but live, in the diagram, so that when it is viewed or copied via CTRL-B, the diagram can have the header/footer.  Anyone know a way to do that?

PS. This would be in addition to any model language header that is already part of the frame, such as in UML/SysML.

Thanks,
Miguel.

[Geert Bellekens]

I'm not completely sure what you mean by header/footer, but I don't think such an option exists.

Geert

[Miguel]

Hi Geert,

Something like this:





Thanks,
Miguel

[Geert Bellekens]

Yes, you can add text elements and images to a diagram. With those you can add a heaer and footer like that.

Geert

[Miguel]

Yes, but what I'm really asking is whether it is possible to do this on every diagram, without me having to add the text and graphics myself on every diagram.  Headers/Footers are usually defined, for instance in Powerpoint or Word, or many other applications, once and then appear on every new 'page' or 'slide' or whatever.  In the case of EA, I'm trying to find if it is possible to set up a header/footer that appear on every diagram in the model.

Thanks.

[Uffe]

Hi Miguel,


Tricky. I don't think there's a way to do exactly what you want.

Background tiles (Preferences -- Diagrams -- Gradients and Background) are not included when you copy-paste into a different tool, but they are included when you generate documents. And anyway it's only one fixed image and I'm not sure if EA will accept one with a transparent colour.

Diagram watermarks (Preferences -- Diagram -- Appearance) are text-only and repeated over the entire page. I wrote a suggestion about those a few years ago but it never went anywhere.

Document watermarks (document generation dialog -- Generate) can be used to add a static watermark... to generated documents only.

So no, I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

You could achieve a limited version of this function with an Add-In which automatically adds *and moves* a header and/or footer every time a diagram is opened. It's the moving that's the tricky part: EA doesn't have a concept of a floating label which is always at the top or bottom of a diagram, everything in the diagram is located at an absolute coordinate. But since these auto-added images would be regular diagram objects they would also be included in generated documents.


/Uffe