Tricks for plug-in development.
When creating diagram sometimes you might want to have shapes showing different background color. To do this you can specify the background color of individual elements one by one. But instead of manually specify the background color shape by shape, you can also do this via Open API. In this article we will demonstrate how to control the background color setting of elements in your active diagram using Visual Paradigm Open API. Read more
CRUD (Create, Read, Update & Delete) are the four basic operations which being performed on data. When analyzing a system, relaying various activities and data together with a CRUD chart can help to understand the relationships between different activities, and how they being link together by the data. Visual Paradigm support creating CRUD chart for any model elements in the project. Besides manually create the CRUD chart you can also generate programmatically using Open API. In this article we will teach you how to generate CRUD chart using Open API. Read more
Visual Paradigm Open API provide Java programming interface for manipulate diagrams and models within the project. In this article we will show you how to hide out attribute from class shape in class diagram. Suppose we would like to hide out the name attribute from Customer class in current opening diagram: Read more
The project reference feature in Visual Paradigm allow users to reuse model elements from different projects. This not just saving effort in re-creating same model element again and again across projects, but also maintain the consistence of models as the changes on the model element automatically reflect on the projects which using it. In complex situation such as multiple levels of reference project sometimes it will be difficult to identify the origin of a particular model element, especially when the diagrams are develop by multiple users. By using Open API we can create plugin to find out the origin project of a model element. In this article we will show you how to create this plugin. Read more
Visual Paradigm allows you to create the Grid Diagram for listing model elements in tabular form, structuring them into a table with elements as rows and properties as columns. The Grid Diagram can either be manipulated directly from the GUI, or through the use of the Open API. This article shows you how to develop a plugin yourself for creating a grid diagram. Use case models will be used for creating the grid diagram in this example as following: Read more
Open API is an extension mechanism provided by Visual Paradigm for extending the functionalities of the client software. The Open API is in Java based, which allows you to have full access to the model data in your project file. By using Open API, you can create your own plugin to implement some customized features.
You might need to create diagrams in multilingual for different team members around the globe. Instead of maintaining multiple set of diagrams of the same models for several languages, the nickname feature in Visual Paradigm enables you to define multiple languages for a single set of diagrams, allowing you to switch between different languages in just a matter of a few clicks. The nickname can be manipulated directly from the GUI, or through the use of the Open API. This article shows you how develop a plugin yourself by swapping the original name of the diagram and model element with the current selected nickname. Read more
In requirement capturing use case is typically used to model the system goal where there user or stakeholder would like to achieve. Sometimes the use case could be very big and hard to manage. In agile development approach the use case would further break down into smaller pieces called user story. The user story is small and should be able to complete within a sprint so that the team can easily manage it and make progress to the development in consistent manner. Visual Paradigm support capture requirements with user stories, and within each user story user can define various execution scenarios that developers should be catered during development. The user story scenario is not just available to access within the VP’s interface, but also accessible from the Open API. In this article we will show you how to retrieve the scenario information using Open API. Read more
Visual Paradigm support defining implementation detail to operation model via the specification dialog. Besides you can also do this via Open API. In this example we will show you how to create a simple class model with an operation, and specify its implementation. Read more
Visual Paradigm’s Open API not just provides a way to extend the functionality of Visual Paradigm, but also offer you a door to integrate Visual Paradigm with 3rd party software. The integration is not necessary to single direction, from model to 3rd party software, but also from your 3rd party software to models in your Visual Paradigm project. i.e. models being updated by external system. In this situation an indication on diagram could be very helpful to indicate what model elements being updated. Starting from v13.1 Visual Paradigm’s Open API support highlight diagram elements on your diagram. This can help you to indicate what element was being updated by your 3rd party software. In this article we will show you how to highlight the elements in your diagrams. Read more
