Login | Register
My pages Projects Community openCollabNet

Welcome to the new Tigris! There have been some changes to the administration of mail lists. Project and list owners should check out the Discussion Services release notes.

ArgoUML Overview of Major Features

This tour consists of 18 screens, each of which is described in a section of this page:
(The first 10 screenshots in this tour were made with ArgoUML v0.15.2)

  1. Splash Screen
  2. Blank Design
  3. Adding Classes
  4. Naming Classes
  5. Direct Text Editing
  6. Class Properties
  7. Association Properties
  8. First "To Do" Item
  9. Adding An Operation
  10. Operation Properties
  11. Operation Checklist
  12. A Java-specific "To Do" Item
  13. Class Source Code
  14. Inheritance-centric Perspective
  15. Dismissing a "To Do" Item
  16. Customizing a Perspective
  17. Modified Perspective

Back to ArgoUML Tours
Back to ArgoUML Home

01. Splash Screen

This is what users see while ArgoUML loads.

02. Blank Design

The tool starts with an empty design document.

03. Adding Classes

Classes can be added to the untitled diagram by clicking on the class icon in the toolbar.
Double clicking on a toolbar button "locks" that tool untill the arrow tool is selected.
The yellow sticky notes and wavy, red underlines indicate incomplete or problematic parts of the design.
Placing the mouse over a sticky note or wavy line will display a blue tool-tip that briefly describes the problem.

04. Naming Classes

The user can set the name of a class or association by simply selecting it and typing.

05. Direct Text Editing

Double clicking on a name allows the name to be edited. You can double click on the other compartments of the class to edit them.

06. Class Properties

The "Properties" tab in the details pane shows details of the selected model element.

07. Association Properties

Asssociations also have properties.

08. First "To Do" Item

ArgoUML contains design critics that continuously analyze the design and produce "to do" items that point out problems and incompleteness.
When a "to do" item is selected, the "offending" element of the design is highlighted in red and a brief description is shown in the details pane.

09. Adding an Operation

The user decides to follow this critic's advice and add an operation via a toolbar button. ArgoUML gives it by default the name "newOperation()".

10. Operation Properties

When a model element is selected in the explorer, its details are shown in the "Properties" tab.
Note that the criticism that class Shape has no operations has been automatically removed.

11. Operation Checklist

Design checklists are commonly used in review meetings to help catch design errors and prompt thinking.
Argo provides checklists that are specific to the selected model element.

12. A Java-specific "To Do" Item

This is an example of a critic with knowledge of limitations of the target language.

13. Class Source Code

Source code for the selected model element is shown in the "Source" tab if appropriate. In the future, ArgoUML will parse what the designer types here and update the model. Not shown: the designer can enter comments in JavaDoc format by using the "Javadocs" tab.

14. Inheritance-centric Perspective

The explorer can show any one of several task-specific hierarchical views on the model. Each view is called a "exploring perspective" and clarifies a certain kind of structure in the model. Here, inheritance is emphasized. Other explorer perspectives emphasize associations, states, or transitions.

15. Dismissing a "To Do" Item

This critic reminds the designer to add instance variables to class Shape. The designer considers the advice but decides against following the critic's advice, and clicks the "Resolve Item" icon to dismiss the item.

The "Dismiss Feedback Item" dialog prompts the designer to record an explanation for his or her decision. This explanation will be added to the design history for later reference.

16. Customizing a Perspective

This dialog allows designers to customize or define new explorer perspectives. Each perspective is composed of a set of rules that generate the children of each node in the tree. Here we see that the Inheritance-centric perspective will start at the project, packages in a project will be shown, base classes in a package will be shown, and each class will show its subclasses. As an example, we have added in a new rule that makes each class show its operations (i.e. Classifier -> BehavioralFeature).

17. Modified Perspective

This is the result of modifying the Inheritance-centric perspective to also show operations by selecting rule "Class -> Operations".
Compare this to screenshot 14.

Back to ArgoUML Tours
Back to ArgoUML Home