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Suggestions and Requests / RTF: Include all referenced elements
« on: April 03, 2013, 08:30:19 am »
Dear colleague architects,
My colleagues and I use EA as a repository. New diagrams are created by pulling in elements from lots of external packages. Of course, we then want our RTF reports to contain the diagram and all elements appearing in the diagram, independent of their home package.
We've been flummoxed by the RTF generator options, which appear to restrict the elements to those shown in the RTF document builder tree, so you only get a list of elements in the diagram, but nothing deeper, e.g. connections.
The solution is hidden deep inside an EA manual: http://www.sparxsystems.com/downloads/resources/booklets/reporting_uml_models.pdf, page 10. Take any report as a basis, set the checkbox in
Package / Diagram / Element, and make sure your diagram itself has the "Document each contained elemen"t set: Then rather illogically, "To report on the linked elements in the same style as defined in the Package::Elements section, ***delete*** the
[right-click-to-insert-Element-field(s)] text to leave a blank area".
And voilà, RTF recurses into any referenced elements, as long as they're included in your report.
I'd be happy if the RTF guys could either highlight this behaviour in the manual or better, put something like "recurse by default" insttead of the linked elements in the RTF document definition...
Cheers, Vincent
My colleagues and I use EA as a repository. New diagrams are created by pulling in elements from lots of external packages. Of course, we then want our RTF reports to contain the diagram and all elements appearing in the diagram, independent of their home package.
We've been flummoxed by the RTF generator options, which appear to restrict the elements to those shown in the RTF document builder tree, so you only get a list of elements in the diagram, but nothing deeper, e.g. connections.
The solution is hidden deep inside an EA manual: http://www.sparxsystems.com/downloads/resources/booklets/reporting_uml_models.pdf, page 10. Take any report as a basis, set the checkbox in
Package / Diagram / Element, and make sure your diagram itself has the "Document each contained elemen"t set: Then rather illogically, "To report on the linked elements in the same style as defined in the Package::Elements section, ***delete*** the
[right-click-to-insert-Element-field(s)] text to leave a blank area".
And voilà, RTF recurses into any referenced elements, as long as they're included in your report.
I'd be happy if the RTF guys could either highlight this behaviour in the manual or better, put something like "recurse by default" insttead of the linked elements in the RTF document definition...
Cheers, Vincent