Add Whatever Function You Like

Say More with Custom Attributes

To describe your model elements more precisely, you might want to add your own unique attributes. Perhaps you are working on an ArchiMate diagram with a few devices. And you might want to be able to specify their IP addresses. Simply add a tag called "IP address" and fill in the value. What's more? These tag definitions can be grouped under a stereotype which you can add to multiple model elements, consistently and more efficiently.

Visual Paradigm plug-in provides an extendable platform for developers to add functions to Agilian. Developer can reference to the plug-in development guide to build their own plug-in to read, create, update and delete diagrams and model elements. Developer can use Java to develop plug-in. The following screenshots outline the steps to create plug-in for Agilian.

Plug-in support (Java)

Step 1 of 5: Develop the plugin

Setup the environment for developing plugin and start developing the plugin. You need to first include the openapi.jar to the build path, which can be found under the lib folder of VP Suite installation directory. You may read the User's Guide to learn about how to develop plugin.

Step 2 of 5: Prepare the plugin configuration file

Create a file, name it as plugin.xml and place at the root of plugin. You need to fill in this file to provide information such as classpath, toolbar/menubar configuration, etc.

Step 3 of 5: Deploy the plugin

Create a folder "plugins" under the VP Suite installation directory. Copy the developed plugin to that folder.

Step 4 of 5: Using the plugin

Start the tool. If the implementation and configuration are both correct, you should be able to run the plugin.

Step 5 of 5: Using the plugin (Cont.)

With plugin, you may iterate the project data to perform operations such as create, read, remove and update of project data.

Sample plugin

You may want to hide away some diagram types, menu items or toolbar items to avoid your team creating wrong types of model. Agilian supports customization of User Interface (UI) objects by XML. The following screenshots outline the steps to customize the tool.

Tool customization

Step 1 of 4: Open the Customize UI dialog box

Select Help > Customize UI... from the main menu.

Step 2 of 4: Select the UI components to hide

Select the menus, toolbars and popup menus to hide.

Step 3 of 4: Hide them

Click > to hide the selected components.

Step 4 of 4: Continue modeling

Restart the application and continue modeling. You will find that the chosen components are hidden.

Tutorial

• Customizing Agilian by XML