Usability question

Hi. Am just in the initial phase of evaluating your product for use by my team. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the way the user interaction works. You can just “draw your diagrams” and get on with it–except…

I was wondering if I was missing something, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any way to efficiently enter attributes or operations in the class diagrams. Other tools I have seen either leave you in the “add attribute” or “add operation” mode until you activate something else, or at the very least give you keyboard shortcuts. It doesn’t seem like there’s any way to do this without using the context menu on the diagram.

From discussions with the team, we’re looking for the product that you can create class diagrams and sequence diagrams in the most efficient manner and with the least number of secondary dialogs or mouse clicks. If this feature isn’t in the product now, do you have a schedule for it’s inclusion? The sequence diagrams seem to be quite good though. Hopefully the class diagram stuff is there and I’m just missing it.

Thanks in advance,

ast

Hi,

Keyboard shortcuts to add attributes and operations to classes have been implemented awhile ago.

To add an attribute to the selected class, press:
ALT + SHIFT + A

To add an operation to the selected class, press:
ALT + SHIFT + O

More keyboard shorcuts are located at this link:
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/vpumlTechTip.php

Hope this helps.

Martyn

Yes, just like what Martyn said, if a class is selected, you can press Alt+Shift+O to add an operation or press Alt+Shift+A to add an attribute. Besides, if an operation is selected in the class, you can simply press the “Insert” key to add an operation (and the same for attribute). So if you want to insert ten operations, you can select the class and press Alt+Shift+O to add the first operation, then press the “Insert” key nine times to add the others.

Btw, what do think about having an empty blank line on Class Specification window allowing some ‘rapid fire’ when entering attributes and operations?

I think to a GUI like databases interfaces: when you query for the rows in the tables, there is an empty row at the end of the list for entering new data.


ClassSpecifications.png

Hi Guillaume,

Thank you for your suggestion. How about inline editing? When editing attribute in diagram, you can confirm and then press Insert to create a new one. Is this similar to your need?

Best regards,
Jick

class-model.png

Hi Jick,

Yes, I’ve seen this feature but was not fully convinced by that way. Perhaps I’ve to practice it more.

In fact I thought to this feature because of my knowledge of a concurrent software (PowerDesigner) which has it, and I find it really useful.
It also allows to setup which columns are visible in those lists.

It’s just a matter a suggesting improvements. And I like software which allows several ways to do the same thing, just because some users prefers one way while others like others ways.

Cheers,
Guillaume

Hello Guillaume,

I agree with you. I will certainly pass your suggestion on to our engineers.

Best regards,
Jick