UML Designer User's Guide

Adding (and linking to) a new Thing element

In the actor example above, we manually created a new Actor element for Librarian and then separately created a hypertext link to it. This time, let's let the system do some of the work for us; we can simultaneously create a new element and a hypertext link to it. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Select Use Cases in the middle pane of the Relationships Browser.
  2. Select Adding a new book to the catalog from the list of use cases.
  3. In the use case text, select the word library.
  4. Select Insert Link>Reference from the pop-up menu in the text pane. A window appears listing the different kinds of objects you can link to.
  5. We want to link to a thing, so select Thing from the list. You can accept the default name Library, which is derived from the selected text in the use case.
  6. Select New, indicating that we want to create a new element.
  7. Select OK to confirm the text label for the link.
  8. Repeat the same process for catalog entry and catalog.

For each hypertext link, a Thing icon Thing icon appears along the linked text in the use case description indicating the link to a Thing element. If you select Things in the middle pane of the Relationships Browser, you should see Catalog, Catalog entry, and Library listed.


[ Top of Page | Previous Page | Next Page | Table of Contents | Index ]