The Properties window is divided into three expandable sections:
· <Element type> Settings - for the basic element details
· Project - for general housekeeping settings
· Advanced - only active for generalizable elements. Notes:
· When you click on a field name, a brief explanation of that field displays at the bottom of the Properties window, unless you have selected the Hide Properties Info Section checkbox on the General page of the Options dialog (as for the above screen illustration).
· If you click on the field value for an editable field, a drop-down arrow displays that enables you to select a different value.
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13.2 The System Window
Access: View | Other Project Tools | System.
The System window documents tasks and issues that relate directly to the current project. It has three tabs:
· Project Tasks - a list of major project tasks that require attention; you can filter tasks based on their current status - right-click for a popup menu, or double-click on a line item to modify details
· Project Issues - a list of events, occurrences and situations that impact on project development and delivery; you can review Issues using the right-click context menu or by double-clicking on selected issues
· Project Glossary - a list of all the technical and business terms already defined for a model; you can add to the list, delete or change items and filter the list to exclude by type.
Note:
Right-clicking in the System window displays a context menu that has options for filtering tasks/issues by status, and glossary by term. You can also rearrange the sort-order by clicking in the title bar of the column that the items are to be indexed on.
For more information concerning project tasks, issues and Glossary, see Project Management with Enterprise
Architect.
13.3 The Resources Window
Access: View | Other Project Tools | Resources.
The Resources window displays a tree of Technologies, Templates, Documents, UML Profiles and Patterns, commonly-used model elements and Matrix profiles. This view provides useful shortcuts and re-use functions that you can use to add stock elements to the current model, and patterns and elements for additional information.
Tip:
In the Corporate, Business and Software Engineering, Systems Engineering and Ultimate editions of Enterprise Architect, if security is enabled you must have Configure Resources permission to maintain Resources window items. See User Security in UML Models.
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· MDG Technologies, UML Profiles and UML Patterns provide a convenient way to insert complex new elements and features without having to retype or reconfigure each element (see Extending UML With
Enterprise Architect)
Note:
From release 7.5 of Enterprise Architect, the method of importing MDG Technologies into the Resources window is available but not recommended. However, you might previously have imported Technologies into the Resources window, and these are still available until you specifically delete them (right-click on the Technology and select the Delete Technology context menu option).
You can also synchronize the Tagged Values and constraints for any elements created from a profile element in the Resources window (see Extending UML With Enterprise Architect).
· Templates provides a range of templates for creating HTML (web) reports, RTF reports in either the legacy report generator or the extended RTF report generator (see Report Creation in UML Models), linked documents (see UML Modeling with Enterprise Architect – UML Modeling Tool) and MDG Technology reports; you can create, edit, copy and delete your own (model) templates, and view and copy system- supplied or technology-supplied templates using context menu options
Tip:
To add a document to the shortcut list, select the Project | Documentation | Rich Text Format (RTF) Report menu option. Once you have defined your document click on the Resource Document button and type in a name. The document name then displays in the Resources window. By right-clicking on the document name you can regenerate documents individually or as a batch, or open them directly from Enterprise Architect. (See the Resource Documents topic in Report Creation in UML Models.)
· Matrix Profiles provides quick access to saved Relationship Matrix profiles; double-click on a profile to load the matrix with the saved settings and source-target packages (see UML Modeling with Enterprise
Architect – UML Modeling Tool)
· Favorites provides a shortcut to elements that you configure as a shortcut
· Stylesheets enables you to import XSL Style sheets, which are then available in the drop-down list on the XML Export dialog.
Note:
If you select a style sheet on export, Enterprise Architect applies that style sheet to the XMI generated before saving to file. This makes it convenient to generate other forms of output from the base XMI content. Combined with UML Profiles, this is a powerful means of extending Enterprise Architect to generate almost any content required.
13.3.1 Favorites
The Resources window contains a Favorites folder. Here you can hyperlink to any UML element from the model as a whole, and conveniently drag and drop instances or links to this element into other diagrams. This is particularly useful where certain elements - such as the list of Actors in a system - are re-used again and again, and switching to the Actors folder is not convenient. In cases like this, using the Favorites folder makes managing and creating your model much easier.