Organizing your EA work Desktop
The moment you sit down in a comfortable, yet somewhat uncomfortable chair, drink a cup of coffee, and get ready to start work, you notice the messy surroundings. I briefly wonder, “Am I cleaning because I don’t want to work?”, but I know that a clean environment is essential for concentrating on work, so I end up devoting my morning time to cleaning.
Similarly, prior to system modeling using Enterprise Architect (EA), it is important to set up your work environment. A clean and well-organized workspace goes a long way in increasing modeling efficiency and concentration.
We’ve summarized the basic functions that help you organize your EA work environment.
Spark also provides documentation, “ Customize the Desktop ” to help you Organizing your EA work desktop.
Set only the modeling techniques to use
1. Understanding the features of ‘Manage Technology’ : ‘Manage Technology’ can be accessed through the path ‘Specialize → Manage Technology’, and its purpose is ‘Configure and manage the list of active modeling technologies’. This function simply means setting up and managing the modeling technologies to be used in EA.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 1 This image shows the ribbon selecting Technology in Enterprise Architect. this function will be used to Organizing your EA work Desktop](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-17-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C241&ssl=1)
2. Settings screen : When you click ‘Manage Technology’, you can select a modeling language that suits your current work environment from the screen that appears. The selected language is displayed as ‘Enabled’ on the ribbon (top menu), and menus related to the unselected language disappear. This is a feature that disables unused EA features.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 2 image 18](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-18-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1)
3. Enable SysML only : If you are only interested in SysML, set only SysML to ‘Enabled’ and click ‘OK’. This will ensure that only the SysML-related menus remain on the ribbon; the rest will disappear. This makes your work environment more focused and efficient.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 3 image 19](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-19-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C778&ssl=1)
4. Results : After completing the settings, unnecessary menus disappear from the ribbon menu, and only the SysML-related functions that the user needs to focus on remain. This process greatly contributes to increasing work efficiency in EA.
Setting up perspectives
1. Perspective concept and function
- ‘Perspective’ has the description “Choose a modeling Perspective to better focus on your current design tasks and goals.” This is the ability to limit perspectives to a specific language so users can better focus on their current design tasks and goals.
- ‘Perspective’ simplifies the work environment by displaying only the languages set in the task window and Toolbox. Unlike ‘Manage Technology’, this only affects the language selection options in the Canvas and Toolbox.
2. How to set up Perspective
- ‘Perspective’ can be set through ‘Start → Perspective’ and can also be set in the dropbox next to ‘User’ at the top right of the user’s screen.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 4 image 20](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-20-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C253&ssl=1)
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 5 image 21](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-21-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C909&ssl=1)
In this example, we set up our working environment by simply selecting ‘System Engineering → SysML’. This optimizes the working environment by ensuring that only SysML 1.5 is displayed in Toolbox.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 6 image 22](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-22-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C682&ssl=1)
3. Use of Perspective Sets
- ‘Perspective Sets’ includes ‘Personal Sets’ and ‘Model-Based Sets’, allowing users to set and save the language set they mainly use, or set the language set to use according to the model being modeled.
- You can create a custom ‘Perspective’ containing multiple technologies, which you can use by selecting that ‘Perspective’ from Toolbox.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 7 image 23](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-23-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C910&ssl=1)
Activate only main tabs
After completing Technologies and Perspective settings, turn off unnecessary tabs to clean up the Canvas.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 8 image 24](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-24-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C601&ssl=1)
Now, activate the necessary tabs in the ‘Start → All Windows’ menu.
- Mainly used tabs in the Design menu are ‘Browse’, ‘Inspect’, and ‘Focus’. When enabled, they are managed as subtabs on the left side of the Canvas.
- When you activate ‘Toolbox’ in the ‘Diagram’ tab, a Toolbox is created on the right side of the browser.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 9 image 25](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-25-optimized.png?resize=694%2C1024&ssl=1)
When you activate the ‘Properties’ and ‘Features’ tabs, the corresponding tabs are created on the left and bottom of the work window, respectively. These tabs are essential for beginners.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 10 image 26](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-26-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C405&ssl=1)
Canvas Optimization
If you use EA primarily for diagramming, Canvas size is important. Clicking the pin icon in the upper right corner of each tab will hide the tab, hovering over it will make it reappear, and moving it away will hide it. This allows you to have a large work window.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 11 image 27](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-27-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C410&ssl=1)
Save and load layouts
1. Layout saving process
- To save the screen configuration set by the user, go to the ‘Workspace’ menu on the ‘Start’ ribbon and select ‘Save Workspace’. This feature saves your current screen configuration so you can easily recall it later when needed.
- Enter the desired name in the ‘Custom Workspace Layout Name’ field and save. This way, you can reload your organized work environment at any time.
![[Enterprise Architect] #2. Organizing your EA work Desktop 12 image 28](https://i0.wp.com/www.autosyseng.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-28-optimized.png?resize=1024%2C857&ssl=1)
2. Load Layout
- To load a saved layout, select it from the list of saved layouts through ‘Workspace → My Workspace’.
Now that the basic work environment settings have been completed, we will learn more about the functions of each menu in the next post.
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] #11. Diagram Filters and Layers of 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
[Enterprise Architect] #5. Layout Ribbon of EA
[Enterprise Architect] #4. Design Ribbon of EA
[Enterprise Architect] #3. Start Ribbon of EA
[Enterprise Architect] #1. Useful features of the basic menu of EA (File Management & Explore Panel)