Handi-Selection

Written Date: October 1, 2007
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Editing a complex diagram could be a difficult and error prone task due to the need of selecting a large region of shapes perform mass editing, such as moving. For instance, you have selected half of a complex sequence diagram, moved the selection downward and added a new sequence message in the spaces. But unfortunately, you finally discovered that some of the shapes have not been selected, which makes the diagram incorrect or inaccurate. Thus, you have to fix it manually, which is time consuming and can cause other problems to arise.

However, that is no longer the case. Thanks to Handi-Selection, a new modeling feature introduced by Visual Paradigm, you can now select shapes from within the range of any of the four sides of the mouse cursor position. Take editing Sequence Diagram as an example, you can right-click at certain position, and select all the shapes below. As a result, you can move the sequence messages downwards easily without worrying messing up the design.

Animated Demo

General Usage

Here we have a Business Process Diagram.
Due to a change of requirement, we need to introduce a new task between the task Place Order and Pack Goods, as marked in the diagram below.
Since the spaces are not enough for placing a new shape, we need to consider moving the task Pack Goods to the right hand side. At the same time, the balance of the current design have to be kept. This would be a desired outcome:
To select and move the tasks to the right hand side, Handi-Selection can help.
1. Right-click at where the new shape is expected to be added.
2. Select Handi-selection in the popup menu.
There are four possible options, each one corresponds to a particular way of selecting shape.
3. Select Select all Shapes on the right. The shapes within the range of the right hand side of the clicked position are selected.
Now, we can move the selected shape comfortably.
The new shape can be added to the space gained by moving shapes.
Handi-Selection in Sequence Diagram
Handi-Selection in Sequence Diagram is basically the same as the other diagram types. However, two additional options are supported, They are Select All Messages Above and Select All Messages Below. Comparing to the rest of the Handi-Selection options, this two select only the sequence messages, but nothing else.

Animated Demo

Related Articles

• Another feature for moving a number of shapes together
  Sweeper

Resources

• Visual Paradigm for UML Home
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/
• Business Process Visual ARCHITECT
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/bpva/
• DB Visual ARCHITECT
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/dbva/
• SDE Home
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/sde/
• Download Free Community Edition of Visual Paradigm for UML
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/vpumldownload.jsp?edition=ce
• Download Business Process Visual ARCHITECT
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/bpva/bpvadownload.jsp?edition=me
Software Maintenance VP-UML User's Guide

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