ProductsUModelUML Modeling Tools

Altova UModel® 2012 is designed from the ground up with convenient features and an unmatched visual interface to make UML modeling easy and fun. As with all Altova products, the interface is fully customizable to keep your favorite views and tools at your fingertips to improve efficiency and productivity.

Rich graphical elements

UModel® 2012 diagrams are constructed from a rich collection of color-coded elements to clearly indicate characteristics of your UML models.

With UModel® 2012, everything in your UML diagrams is customizable—size, position, color, typeface characteristics, and line styles. The styles window gives you easy access to all the display options and lets you modify an individual element, a selected group, or an entire category. You can also choose colors from a palette in a pull-down menu, or easily assign custom colors to elements either individually, across groups and families, or for the entire project.

When you set a custom style for an element, the Styles window includes an icon and pop-up text to indicate the special setting.

Click image to enlarge screenshot

You can add notes anywhere in your diagram and, like any other element, you can allow a note to autosize or you can resize and position it manually. Additionally, you can modify the color, font, and text size of any text element. You can even control the format of qualifier text so that long text elements don’t need to appear as a single line.

The identifiers in your class diagrams are carried forward into generated code, and the documentation helper window lets you save text that will be added as comments to your Java or C# code during forward engineering.

When you drag association lines between elements, UModel® 2012 uses highlighting to identify valid connections.

As your model develops, you can drag elements within any diagram to reposition them, or drag and drop from the Model Tree to reuse elements in new diagrams. You can also copy and paste to duplicate individual elements or entire classes, interfaces, packages, and more.

Multiple Layout Controls

Flexible layout options let you give your models the clearest, most logical organization. You can arrange diagrams yourself or let UModel® 2012 layout diagrams automatically, based on several options.The alignment grid forms a background framework to position diagram elements. As you create new elements or move existing ones across the main drawing pane, visual alignment snap lines help you align with other existing elements in the diagram.

For more sophisticated layout controls, the layout toolbar lets you select multiple diagram elements and set their alignment, size, and spacing attributes.

The layout toolbar also lets you select line styles to draw transitions, generalizations, associations, and other connecting lines in the clearest style for your diagram.

UModel® 2012 alerts you with a pop-up warning if you create an element that contains a syntax error, and unlimited undo and redo capabilities let you safely experiment with all the options.

As you create any diagram you can use the entire pane and even expand the drawing boundaries automatically by dragging any element off the right or bottom edges of the window. The right-click context menu lets you add an optional UML heading and frame to the diagram, and the frame is automatically drawn in an appropriate size.

The class diagram below illustrates the optional UML heading in a class diagram. In this screenshot all the property and association compartments are collapsed to focus on class associations.

Plentiful program controls

UModel® 2012 displays a series of helper windows at the left of the main diagram window to assist you as you build, view, and navigate your models.

Your perspective of the project is selected in the view window. The model tree view is a project overview of the model organized by the relationships between individual diagrams. The diagram tree sorts your model by diagram types, making it easy to focus on individual diagrams to analyze data by class or object diagrams or easily review requirements captured in use cases.

The favorites view, a third option in the view window, is a place to collect your personal favorites – reusable building blocks or “work-in-progress” diagrams for quick access. You can use this view to organize and chart repetitive navigation of large and complex projects.

The Overview helper window, shown at the bottom of the screenshot above, even provides a reduced view and a quick navigation tool of complex diagrams that are too large to display in the main drawing pane.

Regardless which view is active, when you create a new element or select an existing one, its attributes and features are displayed in the properties window. Pull-down menus and check boxes make it easy to define, view, or edit any element property. Moreover, UModel® 2012 entry helpers, shown below as an arrowhead and square click handles attached to the Class1 rectangle, let you edit many element aspects directly in the diagram design pane.

The zoom menu selection lets you shrink large complex diagrams to fit the main display window, or you can zoom in to concentrate on individual elements and details. The overview window shows you which portion of a large diagram is currently displayed and lets you easily navigate.

You can dock or float each information window, or close it until needed. Right-click context menus and rollover tool tips quickly give you what you need without cluttering your view of the model diagrams.

Each diagram type has its own toolbar, so the screen won’t be crowded with irrelevant icons. You can turn toolbar text labels on or off and you can display or hide any toolbar.

Hyperlink Any Element to a URL, External File, or Other Diagram

UModel® 2012 allows you to add hyperlinks to any element in any UML diagram. Simply select an element, then choose the Hyperlinks option from the right-click context menu to open the Edit Hyperlinks dialog. For instance, you might want to add a hyperlink to your use case actor to cross-reference a user story or other requirements document.

You can create hyperlinks to external files, to Web addresses, or to other diagrams in your project.

Clicking the hyperlink in UModel conveniently opens the external file, diagram, or Web address.

The User defined name field in the Edit Hyperlinks dialog lets you enter a short, clear description of the hyperlink. Your description becomes pop-up text for the hyperlink icon.

Diagram Layers

UModel® 2012 Enterprise Edition even supports a diagram layers feature, similar to layers functionality in dedicated graphics applications, aided by a new Layers helper window.

The UModel® 2012 Enterprise Edition Layers window lets you create and control layers in any diagram type. Each element in a diagram can be assigned to a specific layer, and layers can be made invisible or locked to prevent changes.

Layers allow you to group elements logically within diagrams. For instance, comments added during a review cycle can be recorded in notes placed on a dedicated layer. Later the comments layer can be made invisible for diagram printing or generation of project documentation, but retained as a pernament record of the review process.

Find out how visually interesting and accessible UML can be with UModel® 2012. Download a free trial today!