David Herron
2002-06-20 17:29:00 UTC
I just got OmniGraffle last night ... I'd kicked the tires a bit about a
month ago, and decided to buy in last night, with the pressing need being
to draw a use case diagram for a project I'm beginning.
I'd remembered that OmniGraffle had UML charting built in. Since Use Case
diagrams are one of the UML charts, I'd presumed that the built in UML
templates would include the Actor and Use Case objects. Well, it doesn't.
I'm glad that building a template file was very easy, and dropping the
file into the OmniGraffle preferences directory was very easy, and was
recognized immediately (didn't even have to reboot the application).
So, how can you claim to support UML if you don't include Use Case Diagram
or Sequence Diagram symbols?? Yeah, okay, you've got some of the other
symbols used in charts like Class Diagram, Deployment Diagram, etc, but
the Use Case and Sequence diagrams are the ones I find so helpful.
In any case, I'd love to share the thing I put together last night.
I found it useful, and was quickly able to make a rather comprehensive use
case diagram for my project, and went to sleep very happy.
There's only one question I have. To construct the Actor, I put together
an object with two levels of grouping. The stick figure is one set of
objects, grouped together, and then I placed a text object under that and
grouped them together. I can place the Actor object easily on the diagram
and resize it to my hearts content. But to edit the text label, I have to
ungroup the object, edit the text, and then regroup it. This isn't
exactly the smoothest operation.
It would be better to have it so a grouped object can have an attached
label that is connected to the grouped object but not as part of its
grouping.
The other difficulty was - while creating the stick figure, well, how do
you make the legs so they look right? They need to be the same length,
and at the same angle, but mirror image of each other, yes? So I drew one
leg, and then duplicated it, expecting I could find a ROTATE operation
somewhere in the application. There are ROTATE operations in other
similar software such as photoshop, fireworks, paint shop pro, and
illustrator, so why not here. Well, there isn't such an operation (that I
could find) and after a moments of frustration I got on with the job and
drew the other leg as best as I could.
Similarly getting the arms to look right was tricky. Each arm should be
the same length. Fortunately it's just one line drawn across, so it was
just a matter of playing with the endpoints and placement until it looked
right. But maybe the program could provide a helper of some kind to help
centering an object around another one.
- David
month ago, and decided to buy in last night, with the pressing need being
to draw a use case diagram for a project I'm beginning.
I'd remembered that OmniGraffle had UML charting built in. Since Use Case
diagrams are one of the UML charts, I'd presumed that the built in UML
templates would include the Actor and Use Case objects. Well, it doesn't.
I'm glad that building a template file was very easy, and dropping the
file into the OmniGraffle preferences directory was very easy, and was
recognized immediately (didn't even have to reboot the application).
So, how can you claim to support UML if you don't include Use Case Diagram
or Sequence Diagram symbols?? Yeah, okay, you've got some of the other
symbols used in charts like Class Diagram, Deployment Diagram, etc, but
the Use Case and Sequence diagrams are the ones I find so helpful.
In any case, I'd love to share the thing I put together last night.
I found it useful, and was quickly able to make a rather comprehensive use
case diagram for my project, and went to sleep very happy.
There's only one question I have. To construct the Actor, I put together
an object with two levels of grouping. The stick figure is one set of
objects, grouped together, and then I placed a text object under that and
grouped them together. I can place the Actor object easily on the diagram
and resize it to my hearts content. But to edit the text label, I have to
ungroup the object, edit the text, and then regroup it. This isn't
exactly the smoothest operation.
It would be better to have it so a grouped object can have an attached
label that is connected to the grouped object but not as part of its
grouping.
The other difficulty was - while creating the stick figure, well, how do
you make the legs so they look right? They need to be the same length,
and at the same angle, but mirror image of each other, yes? So I drew one
leg, and then duplicated it, expecting I could find a ROTATE operation
somewhere in the application. There are ROTATE operations in other
similar software such as photoshop, fireworks, paint shop pro, and
illustrator, so why not here. Well, there isn't such an operation (that I
could find) and after a moments of frustration I got on with the job and
drew the other leg as best as I could.
Similarly getting the arms to look right was tricky. Each arm should be
the same length. Fortunately it's just one line drawn across, so it was
just a matter of playing with the endpoints and placement until it looked
right. But maybe the program could provide a helper of some kind to help
centering an object around another one.
- David