Suggestion: Layer support in diagrams

[Dave_Bullet]

Be able to create layers and assign which layers an element or connector appears on.

This would save having to create multiple diagrams then aligning element positions to be the same on each.

Suggest a user is able to define per diagram layers (arbitrary names / numbers) and you can right click a connector / element and checkbox which layers it will appear in.

Then a right click option on the diagram to toggle layer visibility.

Not sure how this would work on web publishing.  Suggest "show all elements / connectors" would be the default.

What do you think?

Cheers,
David.

[Kevin G. Watson]

Oh yes please, please pretty pretty please.

Perhaps a form of animated gif would address the web publishing problem; or one of those cool layered transparent thingies that trendy designer folks are spinning over.

Kevin

[Rudy]

I  must admit that also we would like to see this functionallity supported. Any modern day drawing tool works with layers. (Even MS Visio supports the layered concepts).

Specially for maintenance and web presentation, MS Visio may be used as example, for they do actually support this quite well.

[Dave_Bullet]

Any thoughts on this one Sparx?

I've had another solution.... more simple and in fact probably more powerful / re-usable in other contexts.

Have a "copy diagram layout" option.  This would re-position elements on the current diagram to where they are located on the diagram you select.

Better still - have a "sync layout" toggle - so that EA will keep the diagram sync'd on changes.

That way, you could have multiple diagrams.  Each showing a different "layer" - with common components in the same place.

PS: Sparx, if you do the above, don't forget swimlane syncrhonisation too!

Cheers,
DAvid.