Actor grid

Actors grid is a table with actors listed in it. It lets you to access all actors in a project or diagram, check their related use cases, lookup and create actors.

Creating the actor grid

Click on UML on toolbar and select Actor Grid from the drop down menu.

Open Actor Grid

 

The overview of actors grid

The actors grid

Button Name Description Configure Grid Click this button to reveal Name and Model Element. To hide them, click this button again. Create Actor Create a new actor. Find To find an actor by providing its name or documentation. Open Specification... To open the specification of actor selected in grid. Show View... To show the view(s) of actor selected in grid. Visualize... To visualize an actor selected in grid.   Configure columns... Add/ remove property column(s) in Term list.   Refresh To update the display on the Term list. Project To select the scope for showing model elements on Term list. Actor's name filter To filter actors by name. The rubber on the right hand side is for clearing the filter content.

The fields in actors grid

Accessing use case from actor

Click on the name of use case in the Related use case cell of the actor that we want to access its related use case.

Access use case from actor

Creating actor

1. Click on above the grid.
   

   Create an actor in grid

2. Name the actor. You may optionally reset the ID by double-clicking on the ID cell and entering a new one.
   

   Name actor

   NOTE:

   The actors created in actors grid are automatically put under the Actors model. You may move to another model through dragging and dropping in Model Explorer.

Visualizing an actor

You can form a diagram with actor, or show it in an existing diagram by visualizing it in actors grid. To visualize an actor:

1. Select the actor to visualize.
   

   Select an actor to visualize

2. Click on above the grid.
   

   Create Visualize...

3. If you want to visualize actor in a new diagram, Check Create new diagram, select the type of diagram to create and specify the diagram name.
   

   Name a new diagram

   If you want to visualize actor in an existing diagram, check Show in existing diagram and select a diagram in the diagram list.
   

   Select an existing use case diagram to visualize the actor

4. Click Create button at the bottom of the dialog box.

Filtering actors

By filtering actors, actors that do not match the required naming convention are filtered. To filter, enter the name of actor, or part of its name at the top right of grid. You can make use of the asterisk (*) character to represent any character(s).

Filter actor by name

Finding actor

To find out actors that match specific naming or documentation pattern:

1. Click above the grid.
   

   Find an actor

2. In the Search Text text box, enter the text to search, check Name and/or Documentation to specify whether to search the names and/or documentation of actors. Click Find button. As a result, the grid is updated to highlight the matched actor(s).

   The matched actors are highlighted