Automatic appearance of connectors during reuse of elements

[msf]

When reusing class-type elements from a class diagram in another diagram, the relation between the classes are shown in the second diagram as well. I can manually exclude these connectors from the diagram, but excluding a whole bunch of connectors manually when adding data elements from the business data model is an inconvenient job. (Especially when it is not possible to mark several connectors and hidem them in one run).

I have learned, that it is possible to prevent this behaviour when you drop an instance of the object but it is not possible to do it when dropping a link. Another tool I know acts exactly the other way round - hiding implicit connectors is standard off but can be switched on. (Which has some other issues).

I suggest to offer a "hide connectors" option during the drop process even during link dropping.

[Geert Bellekens]

If this is causing you problems then you are doing it wrong.

You are using a modelling tool, not a diagramming tool. There are very little reasons why you should hide a connection between two elements when you show them on a diagram.

Geert

[qwerty]

I concur with Geert. And I wonder where so many people come from asking for this "feature" over and over :-o

q.

[KP]

Yes and no. I have often yearned for this functionality - specifically when creating diagrams with a single element in the centre and all related elements in a circle around it where you are only interested in seeing the connectors to and from the central element. However, you will find that it is MUCH easier to hide connectors that you can see than show connectors that you can't see, and on balance I prefer things the way they are (not that my opinion counts for much ).

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Yes and no. I have often yearned for this functionality - specifically when creating diagrams with a single element in the centre and all related elements in a circle around it where you are only interested in seeing the connectors to and from the central element. However, you will find that it is MUCH easier to hide connectors that you can see than show connectors that you can't see, and on balance I prefer things the way they are (not that my opinion counts for much ).

Hey! We "copyrighted" the "Neighborhood diagram" over a decade ago!   Our Diagrammer automatically maintains them for us.

We expect attribution..   

BTW:  The arrival of relationships between relationships and between relationships and shapes caused some "conniptions" for our diagrammer, but they've been mostly sorted. 

Paolo

[Helmut Ortmann]

Hi,

there are cases when it is useful not to show all relationships between nodes on a diagram.

Usually, I say: A diagram should have a purpose - the story of the diagram. Then the diagram has to stick to this goal - show what's useful and hide what distracts the reader.

The thing is most readers unconsciously assume that a diagram shows all relations between nodes.  Therefore, if you deliberately hide relations you should annotate that.

I've seen and experienced the usefulness of completeness markers in diagrams to be always aware of the fact that not all relationships are shown.

Therefore I wrote a little Addin to show nodes by colors that relationships are missing (not complete). See: http://www.community.sparxsystems.com/community-resources/507-79set-completeness-marker-for-classes-in-diagrams

Kind regards,

Helmut

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Helmut,


I, too, believe Completeness markers are very important; and should be an EA inbuilt function.  I have toyed with the idea of indicators to show hidden relationships in diagrams.  I was heading down the path of putting a note on the diagram to that effects.  I think that's still a good idea.

I also like your idea of further indicating on a per-item basis the "state of play".  However, because we already use the various rendering options for other purposes, we find we increasingly we use decorations for these types of purposes.  I guess we can't use your idea as there's no way (while we only have boolean user-selectable diagram properties) we can't set the "state of play" as a USDP which can be picked up by the shapescript and the appropriate decoration supplied.

Any suggestions?

Paolo

[msf]

Nice discussion 

Having a technical / IT role I would agree to Geert that these diagrams are part of a model and show real consistency and the "truth". I find it very interesting to have an addon that shows incomplete connectors, since in reality I made some connectors a second time because I didn't remember that they have been excluded. ;-)

On the other hand, if we make diagrams that have a business or architectural focus it is sometime useful to reduce complexity and from my point it is not an option to make separate paintings in Visio for that reason. It is the advantage of such a tool to have all these information at one point.

[Glassboy]

On the other hand, if we make diagrams that have a business or architectural focus it is sometime useful to reduce complexity and from my point it is not an option to make separate paintings in Visio for that reason. It is the advantage of such a tool to have all these information at one point.

There's a diagram filter thing.