What's the purpose of the Textual Analysis feature?

[Barry_Manilowa]

I really like the concept of the Textual Analysis. You can extract text from documents and turn them into model elements, but the logic behind it is unclear. Perhaps, I am missing the point of the feature. The documentation has been unhelpful clarifying it.

After extracting candidate items in the document, it lets you set the element type. You can set the modeling element type, but available list of types seem to be an incomplete, random selection of elements from various UML diagramming types. Why can’t I, for instance, extract a term and turn it into a class data member or method, or into a swimlane?

There’s also a column labeled “Candidate Class” which adds further confusion. It lets you assign a different name than the one extracted from the document, which is useful. The column naming, however, leads you to think it applies to class names or it applies to the categorization of the element.

Thanks.

[Jick]

Hi Barry,

Thank you for your post. The name “Candidate Class” sounds confusing. I will let our engineers know about it. Regarding the extraction of candidate model element, currently we only support the most common types. I will again share your suggestion with our team. In the meantime, you may consider to achieve that through the use of Glossary Grid as a workaround. Here are the steps:

1. In the text, right click on the word(s) from which you want to derive a model element.

2. Select Add “${word}” as Glossary Term and Transit to New Model Element…"

3. In the Glossary Term window, uncheck “Filter based on active diagram palette”

4. Select the type of element you want to create from the Transit to New Model Element drop-down menu.

5. Click OK to confirm

You will then see the word(s) being underlined in textual analysis. Press and hold the Ctrl button, and click on the word(s). This will bring you to the glossary grid where the terms are listed, which includes the word(s) you just selected. Besides the term, a model element has also been created. You can find it under the Model Explorer (View > Panes > Model Explorer)

Hope the information has helped. Feel free to contact us again if you have any questions.

Best regards,
Jick Yeung

[Barry_Manilowa]

Just a quick note from my evaluation. Visual UML definitely has some useful and unique features giving it a major advantage over the competition. Unfortunately, its interface is very cumbersome, difficult to navigate and hard to comprehend. I attribute it to its cross-platform implementation and its broad range of support for other modeling and diagramming paradigms.

Consequently, it crams an insane number of options and features by hiding them within a sea of windows, dialog boxes and buttons with no clear logical organization. It takes quite a bit of clicking to make the most basic edits to an existing model. Nearly every dropdown menu is a long and tiresome scan for the option you want. This all makes the modeling process slow and tedious, making you want to abandon it for pencil and paper.

Overall, there’s some good work behind the product making it superior to most UML tools, but its lack of modeling focus, UI organization and usability makes it the least bad among the competition.

[Jick]

Hi Barry,

Thank you for your valuable comment. I have forwarded this thread to our team to take a look. We will try our best to make our product better and better.

Best regards,
Jick Yeung