Sequence Diagram Message Placement

[dancindavid]

I am new to UML.  Please let me know if I misunderstand anything.

A couple things I have noticed about sequence diagrams that are frustrating are:

1.  When messages are moved, or deleted, and there is a State/Continuation element in them, the element doesn't always move around the same distance as the messages in which they are placed.

2.  When using Fragments, if you delete a message inside a fragment, messages outside the fragment move up into the fragment.  This doesn't seem desirable.

3.  It would be nice if one could select and move continuous blocks of messages at once.

4.  It would be nice to have a setting that will allow me to set a default spacing between newly created messages.

I am curious as to why no one else has suggested these upgrades in previous postings.  Makes me think maybe I'm doing things incorrectly.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

This part of EA is BAD (Broken as Designed).

The fragments aren't true fragments only chimeras...

Paolo

[Casey_A]

I'm with dancindavid on this issue. Sequence diagram's are fine to work with in EA IF you have your exact diagram laid out on paper and can just transfer it to EA. But heaven help you if you need to actually design something in EA.

It's inability to keep messages contained within fragments or move multiple messages at once is what makes me cringe at the thought of having to go back to my model and refactor a design.

The seemingly simple task of inserting or deleting a couple of messages at the top of a sequence diagram leads to hours of pain trying to adjust every subsequent message to get them all back into their correct fragments again.