Messages

1

General Board / Notes colour not matching the manually set colour

« on: March 14, 2024, 04:21:13 am »

On a class element, changing the text colour only changes the title colour. The notes colour remains unchanged. Is there a way to also change the notes colour?

2

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Controlling the "drop as" option

« on: November 24, 2023, 01:40:51 am »

On most diagrams, dropping an element from another package offers "Link" as the default option.

On a customised Use Case diagram in my MDG, the default is "Instance (Object)". I don't really want that to be the default (and thought I'd done something wrong as on other diagrams I have created "Link" is the default).

It seems to be that if a diagram is customised from a "Diagram_Use Case" metaclass then "Instance" is the default. Is there a way to control that (I'm thinking an attribute that I can add). There doesn't seem to be anything in the MDG guide.

Interestingly changing the metaclass to "Diagram_UseCase" (without the mandatory space and hence not in the list of valid metaclasses) actually results in the behaviour that dropped elements do default to "Link". (I only discovered that as I have mistakenly created other diagrams with that as the base metaclass!)

3

General Board / Re: Hide empty sources and targets in Relationship Matrix

« on: November 15, 2023, 09:19:49 pm »

I haven't seen the option built-in, however if you want a view of only related elements then I suspect you could achieve that using a model search to populate each axis with only elements related to the other axis (I assume that you are currently using a package search).
An alternative reason for including all elements might be that it might be important to see that there are no relationships (and if you hide them then you are also unable to create them in the relationship view), but obviously if that's not of concern to you then hiding elements without relationships may be relevant.

4

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Code VBScript is taking so long to execute

« on: August 18, 2023, 04:47:33 pm »

In addition to using SQL to find objects, I find that Jscript is faster than VBscript (there's also the option of Javascript but I've rarely used that).

5

General Board / Re: Requirements Inheritance

« on: August 18, 2023, 04:44:59 pm »

You can re-use requirements on multiple diagrams. You could produce one requirements package for common requirements (with one or multiple diagrams/sub-packages to manage them) and create requirement elements for the common requirements.

Then you could create one package (plus sub-packages as needed) and one or more requirements diagrams per variant and include on these both the common requirements (as links, so that there is only one actual element of the common requirements) and the variant requirements. If you need to export to Word to share then you can generate the documents to include the elements on the diagram and not just in the package. I would suggest using the Alias to help manage them (e.g. C1, C2 etc for the common requirements, V1-1, V1-2, V2-1 etc. for each variant - rather than V1, V2 etc. I would choose a few characters to help identify what the variant is, like the initials of it's name).

6

General Board / Defining labels for points on dynamic polar chart

« on: August 09, 2023, 07:10:27 pm »

I'd like to use the dynamic polar chart, but don't want the points labelled by numbers (in the EA Example file the points are labelled 1 to 11). I want to use a text string to mark each point but cannot see how to do that (but surely it is possible?). Has anyone found the magic javascript method to define each point's label?

7

General Board / Re: Common model file type between EA 16 64bits and EA 14

« on: July 12, 2023, 07:50:41 pm »

Do you have to use the 64 bit version? You could also install the 32 bit version and use the original eapx files. There is also a way to use eapx files with 64 bit (I replied to another post on here which indicated why I might have been able to open eapx in 64 bit which would involve installing something else, but I did find some things slow, if I remember it was a either a search or a script).
You can install both 32 and 64 bit on the same machine.

8

General Board / Re: Adding Model Views to and MDG

« on: July 12, 2023, 07:22:41 pm »

The only difference to your image and the way I have defined mine is that my searches are in a folder under my model view (I presume I created Search Folders as I am including searches). So between your "PRC Model View #2" and the "PRC Search 2", I have a folder and the search is in that extra folder. I have no idea whether that is significant or whether I just did that because I wanted to organise my searches into three groups. If you do that and remove the PRC Slideshow does it then work?

9

General Board / Build of github.com/Automic/EaToConfluence?

« on: July 11, 2023, 09:48:44 pm »

From another post a couple of years old, I came across a link to a tool to publish EA to Confluence: https://github.com/Automic/EaToConfluence

The only thing is, that despite the description saying that the installer is in the Releases, there are no releases nor installer and the only comment in the Issues is a statement to that fact.

Has anyone taken the source code and successfully built it and could somehow make it available, perhaps linked to that Github repository (a fork?)? My skills prevent me from knowing how to compile the code.

And yes I am aware of Prolaborate but the cost is prohibitive.

10

General Board / Re: Document Generation: Order by Z-Order (in templates, not fragments)

« on: April 13, 2023, 08:02:12 pm »

As far as I know, elements are presented in the order they are in the project browser. One option could be to write a script that will sort the elements into their z-order within the project browser and then to generate the document (assuming that you don't want some other specific order in the project browser that cannot be scripted to reverse the z-order sort). I've used that method to sort elements into Alias order prior to generating the document.

11

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: A simple way to export specifications to csv

« on: March 15, 2023, 10:28:24 pm »

By "memo field", are you referring to a Tagged Value in which you have put <memo> and then entered a note in the memo? If so, add a Tagged Value Field and select Notes, then enter the name of the Tagged Value.

12

General Board / Re: Using ChatGPT to create EA Scripts

« on: March 15, 2023, 10:10:07 pm »

Out of interest, what was your input (i.e. how detailed) to generate a script?
Did you specify that it was to be a script for EA or just ask it for a VB/J/Javascript?

13

General Board / Hiding Stereotype on specific elements - _HideStype?

« on: March 15, 2023, 09:09:36 pm »

Is the _HideStype attribute intended to hide the stereotype when elements/connectors are created (or have I misunderstood the attribute's use)? The documentation for the attribute states  "Set the 'Initial Value' field to a comma-separated list of stereotypes to hide those stereotypes by setting the 'Hide Stereotyped Features' filter for each new stereotyped model element.". I'm not sure if something also needs to be done with a 'Hide Stereotyped Features' filter in order for it to work, or maybe there is something in the inclusion of the word Features which means the attribute will not have an effect on elements and connectors.

Like Modesto in https://sparxsystems.com/forums/smf/index.php/topic,47123.msg275034.html#msg275034, I want to hide stereotypes on specific elements.

I've added the _HideStype attribute to the metaclass and specified the stereotypes extended from it for which I want to hide their stereotype. But the stereotypes are still shown when elements and connectors are created from the toolbox. I've checked the generated MDG XML and the _HideStype is included in there. I've checked in EA versions 14, 15 and 16 and they all behave the same.

The diagram properties - Elements  - Show Element Stereotypes will globally turn off all element stereotypes but that's not what I want.
The diagram properties - Features - Show Stereotypes option seems to have no effect (stereotypes are shown whether it is enabled or not), but then it's elements and connectors on my diagram and not features.
The diagram properties - Connectors - Show Stereotype Labels will globally turn off all connector stereotypes, but again not what I want.

14

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Excess white space (new lines) at the end of generated documents

« on: March 02, 2023, 02:45:23 am »

That workaround only works in the simple case illustrated. In more complex templates it doesn't achieve the reduction in white space. In particular it doesn't work when fields are populating a table, which a lot of mine are. Nor does it seem to work when many sections are included from the model, not quite sure why.

15

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Excess white space (new lines) at the end of generated documents

« on: March 02, 2023, 01:11:24 am »

I've figured out a workaround to get rid of one new line (so that halves the white space). If the template is changed to:

package >
{Pkg.Name} < package

There MUST be a space between the end of the template text (in this case {Pkg.Name}) and the start of <package, otherwise the output is literally {Pkg.Name} without any substitution occurring. That gets rid of the new line in the style matching the template definition. It leaves a line at Arial 12 point on the end (and I can find nothing defined in either the Normal.RTF or the Stylesheet that defines this font so it seems to be something EA is unnecessarily inserting on the end of every fragment.

Fingers crossed that if I modify all my templates that all doc generation still works as expected.