[Enterprise Architect] #11. Diagram Filters and Layers of EA

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Useful functions of the Layout menu: Diagram Filters and Layers of EA

In today’s post, we will learn about diagram filters and layers of EA (Enterprise Architect). Ribbons in the Layout menu mainly focus on changing the layout and behavior of the diagram. Among these, the Ribbons in the Diagram, Style, and Alignment panels are closely related to the design elements of the diagram, and using these functions allows you to understand and manipulate each element more intuitively.

In this post, we will specifically focus on the Filter and Layer functions. For this purpose, we will again utilize the SysML taxonomy bdd used in the previous post as an example. Let’s learn how to adjust the diagram to suit the user’s needs, such as emphasizing specific elements of the diagram or hiding unnecessary information through the diagram Filters and Layers of EA.

(For reference, it may be helpful to read the following documents provided by sparx: layers, filters)

This image is a Block Definition Diagram to be used to explain the diagram filters and layers of EA

Diagram Filters and Layers of EA : Filters

The Filter panel allows you to highlight specific elements on your diagram. This is useful when you want to highlight important information within a diagram. (Layout → Filter)

1. By default, the Filter function is set to ‘Filtering Off’, so no filtering is applied.

2. If you set the Filter Type to ‘Name / Contain’ and enter ‘Re’, for example, Structure Diagram and Requirement Diagram with names containing ‘Re’ will be highlighted. This way you can quickly find and highlight the elements you need.

3. Filter Type has various options such as Name, Alias, Author, DateCreated, DataModified, Status, Version, Priority, Stereotype, etc. Using these various filter options, you can filter and highlight elements within your diagram according to your desired criteria.

Diagram Filters and Layers of EA : Layers

The Layers function allows you to display elements on a diagram separately by layer. This allows you to keep your diagrams more organized. It may be difficult to understand this function just by explaining it, so let’s try the layer function ourselves.

1. First, click the ‘Filters and Layers’ button in Layout → Tools Panel to activate the ‘Filters & Layers’ window. You can use the layer management features by selecting the ‘Layers’ tab in this window.

2. Click the ‘New Layer’ button to create a new layer. For example, you might name the first layer ‘Behavior Diagrams’ and the second layer ‘Structure Diagrams’.

3. Assign specific elements on the diagram to this named layer.

4. For example, assign ‘Behavior Diagram’, ‘Activity Diagram’, etc. to the ‘Behavior Diagrams’ layer.

5. Assign ‘Structure Diagram’, ‘Block Definition Diagram’, etc. to the ‘Structure Diagrams’ layer.

6. Elements assigned in this way are displayed on the diagram only when the corresponding layer is activated.

7. You can control the display of elements assigned to a layer by checking or unchecking the checkbox of each layer in the ‘Filters & Layers’ window.

8. This allows you to highlight or hide only elements belonging to a specific layer on the diagram.

These diagram Filters and Layers of EA help you perform effective modeling and analysis by highlighting or emphasizing only specific elements in complex diagrams.

In this post, we learned about the diagram filters and layers of EA. These features can greatly increase the efficiency of your modeling process.

In the next post, we will cover some functions that can be useful when creating diagrams.

If you are interested in other articles about the basic usage of Enterprise Architect, please refer to the links below!

[Enterprise Architect] #15. Export Documents and HTML of EA

[Enterprise Architect] #14. Trace and Navigation, Relation, composition

[Enterprise Architect] #13. Project Browser and Focus Window

[Enterprise Architect] #12. Useful functions creating diagrams with EA

[Enterprise Architect] #10. Diagram views of EA

[Enterprise Architect] #9. EA diagram practice

[Enterprise Architect] #8. EA basic usage

[Enterprise Architect] #7. EA Modeling Component

[Enterprise Architect] #6. Publish Ribbon of EA