Sparx Systems Forum

Enterprise Architect => General Board => Topic started by: Farfetch on September 17, 2002, 07:59:16 am

Title: Colouring items on a diagram
Post by: Farfetch on September 17, 2002, 07:59:16 am
On a diagram I am doing as a design for a software program our team is working on, I like to add colour to items, both as borders and fills to distinguish certain items as independent from the main process.

During this, I coloured in 3 Objects, the first one happily coloured the border and filled in ok. When it came to the second one, wanting to do the same colour, I again clicked on the fill and borders options and chose the same colour. Unfortunately, it didn't do anything, and wouldn't do anything until I chose a different colour for the border and fill, then switched back to the original colour selection to get the effect I wanted.

Is this a bug in the software or am I doing something wrong?

As a side note to the guys who wanted information on my comparison of EA/Visio/Rose - I am currently using the trial version of 3.10, with view to purchase the full copy as I feel it is better than Visio and Rose. Visio, while I think it is quite fancy and I like the office interface it isn't as indepth as EA and seems to concentrate more on fancy visuals than actual tools. The professional edition....crashed on loading with an illegal operation  :)

Rose seems to extremely limited and lacks a huge number of the features EA has such as Requirements, Objects, Entities etc etc, it only seems to have Use Case, Actor and Links and nothing more. Plus their download trial was 260MB and the trial activation didn't work and it took 3 days for them to email me a 15 trial key, which upon entering said I had 11 days left :(

EA is my preference and I will be telling my boss to order it this week hopefully.
Title: Re: Colouring items on a diagram
Post by: kelly_sumrall on September 18, 2002, 05:23:41 am
Farfetch,

You have made the right choice.  I am glad to hear of your experience with Rose.  I will relay that on to some co-workers.

Now, down to business.
What diagram are you using and what procedure.  I haven't changed the color of many objects, but I was just able to change the color two objects (actually more as I am experimenting while writing this reply).  I am in a class diagram and I right click on the object.  In the context menu I select the Adjust Appearence option.  In the dialog box, I can change the Background Color, Font color, and Border Color.  I select the option I want to change, uncheck the Use Default color checkbox, and select a color from the Color Dialog.  I had no trouble doing this with several classes.  I even used the Appearence toolbar to copy the appearence of one object and paste it to many others.  I have had some difficulty with the UI Control from the Custom objects.  So, you may need to elaborate on what type of diagram and object you are changing.

As a side note for the developers at Sparx,  The Undo feature does not undo appearence alterations.
Title: Re: Colouring items on a diagram
Post by: Farfetch on September 18, 2002, 07:56:31 am
I'll try and explain.

On a diagram, I select say an entity. Using the drop down colour options at the top (3 options next to each other: Fill, Font, Border) I select Fill, and select a colour. The entity is filled in that colour.

Now, I select another entity/activity etc and click again on the Fill drop down list, and select the same colour, but now nothing happens and the object remains the default colour.

Using the drop down menu, the only way I can choose the same colour twice is to firstly select a different colour (thus filling the object as a different colour) then clicking the drop down menu again, and selecting the original colour.

This appears to be a bug of some kind, noting your experience, it seems limited to the drop down menus not the overal colour feature.
Title: Re: Colouring items on a diagram
Post by: kelly_sumrall on September 18, 2002, 09:38:25 am
Sounds like the appearence changes when the onchange event fires for the dropdown.  After the change is made to the original object, all you need to do is click the paint brush on the other selected object(s).  Atleast, that works for me.

Does this help?
Title: Re: Colouring items on a diagram
Post by: Farfetch on September 19, 2002, 01:36:01 am
It probably will do, but my point was that there is a bug in the software :( Logically, every time you click an object and click on the fill menu, and choose the same colour it should apply that colour, not just ignore the command.

No biggy though :)

Lewis