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Enterprise Architect Diagram Legends in Project Browser

What is Diagram Legend?

A Diagram Legend is an element that you can add to your diagram to provide information about the colours and/or line thicknesses and styles that have been used in the current diagram, where those colours and other styles have some particular meaning. For example, it is common to have a Legend that indicates a particular colour is indicative of a particular element status or version. Connectors might be coloured according to whether they are of a particular type or direction. Element borders might be thicker or thinner according to some other property or condition.

Legends have additional capabilities, including the ability to auto colour elements in different ways and according to different rules and filters. Legends are classified as elements and will be listed in the Project Browser; however, they are not shown in contents of a Package displayed on a diagram.

What’s new in with Diagram Legend EA 14

Diagram Legend in Enterprise Architect 14 follow same concept with simple but important change it. Considerably in Enterprise Architect 13 creating a legend in diagram or model will only reflects in the diagrams and not in the model project browser. However, this has been updated in the Enterprise Architect 14. When a Diagram Legend is created for a particular diagram. That legend artifact will remain under the respective package.

Creating a Legend

A Legend element on a diagram provides a visual key to the colours and line thicknesses you have used to identify elements and/or connectors that have particular meaning. The Legend can reflect a simple, manually-applied convention such as all elements concerned with a management system being shaded in blue, or all outgoing connectors coloured red. However, the Auto-Colour Legends can also automatically apply the style to elements or connectors having a chosen property, such as a specific phase, stereotype or type.

The Legend lists the element appearance conventions first, and the connector appearance conventions underneath.

To Access:

Drag the Diagram Legend icon from the Common page of the Toolbox onto the diagram.

Legend Properties

The ‘Legend Properties’ define the appearance of the Legend element itself, such as its background colour, title text colour and size, and border colour. If you choose to use default colours, these are derived from the ‘Preferences’ dialog, ‘Standard Colours’ page.

To Access

Double-click Legend element | Style options

Option

Action
Heading Size Either:
Overtype the font size of the Legend Title text with a different value, or
Click on the ‘spinner’ arrows to increase or decrease the font size
Font Colour Click on the drop-down arrow and select one of the standard font colours for the Legend Title text.
If you want to use a non-standard colour, click on the Other button and either select from the larger pallet or define a custom colour.
Background Click on the down arrow and select one of the standard colours as the background fill colour of the Legend element.
If you want to use a non-standard colour, click on the Other button and either select from the larger pallet or define a custom colour.
Border Colour Click on the down arrow and select one of the standard colours as the colour of the border lines of the Legend element.
If you want to use a non-standard colour, click on the Other button and either select from the larger pallet or define a custom colour.
OK button Click on this button to save your changes and close the dialog.
Cancel button Click on this button to abandon any changes and close the dialog.