UML Designer User's Guide

Adding an actor figure

The next step is to show the link between the use case and an actor. For the use case figure, we manually added the figure and then attached it to the underlying element. This time, we'll have UML Designer do some of the work for us:

  1. Select the Adding a new book use case figure.
  2. Select Hide/Show Relationships from the pop-up menu of the use case figure. A window appears listing links for existing relationships involving the use case, followed by any identified candidate links (candidate links are indicated by a preceding +).

    In this case, UML Designer has identified a candidate link between the Adding a book use case and the Librarian actor. This link is suggested because of the reference to Librarian (and the accompanying hypertext link) in the description of the use case.

  3. Select +(self >- (Associated With) -> Librarian <Actor>) from the Hidden Relationships list.
  4. Select >> to add the link to the Shown Relationships list. This creates an explicit "associated with" link and indicates that you want the relationship to be represented in the diagram.
  5. Select OK.
  6. A window appears prompting you to confirm the direction of the association. Select Yes to confirm the default (from the actor to the use case).
  7. An Actor figure attached to Librarian appears on the drawing surface. You can now move this figure in order to rearrange the diagram any way you like.

Use case diagram illustration


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