1.3 Editors
The basic modeling tasks within MetaEdit+ – creating,
modifying and deleting design elements, connecting them with relationships, and
linking them with other design elements – are carried out in the editors.
All editors operate on the same conceptual design data, but by employing
different views and representations suitable for the design situation at hand.
MetaEdit+ provides three editors:
| Diagram
Editor for graphical representations of
models. |
| Matrix
Editor for viewing models as
matrices. |
| Table
Editor for tabular representations of the properties of objects within
models. |
For now, let’s concentrate on
the Diagram Editor. To open an existing model in the Diagram Editor:
1) | In
the Main Launcher, select ‘Simple’ from the Graph Browser’s
Graphs
list. |
2) | Press
the right mouse button to open the pop-up menu for the selected list
element. |
3) | Select
‘Open’ from the pop-up menu (as in Figure
1–3). |
Alternatively, you can
open ‘Simple’ by double-clicking on it in the list.
Figure 1–3. Opening Diagram Editor.
A Diagram Editor
for ‘Simple’, similar to
Figure
1–4, should now open.
Figure 1–4. Diagram Editor for the ‘Simple’ model.
The
Diagram Editor provides a graphical view for editing design data. Each element
is represented by a graphical symbol, and the relationships between elements are
shown as various kinds of lines between them. In the Diagram Editor you can thus
not only edit the conceptual design information, but its graphical layout as
well.
To access and change the data captured by a design
element:
1) | Double-click
a design element in the Diagram Editor (for example, the box labeled
‘EditHours’) to open its property dialog (Figure
1–5). |
Figure 1–5. Property dialog for the ‘EditHours’ element.
2) | In
the property dialog you can change the value of the element’s properties
(e.g. State name, DisplayFn, Blinking and Documentation). To accept your
changes, press OK. |
To change the
graphical layout, select the element and drag it into a new position. You can
also scale elements by dragging their selection handles.
| The
Matrix and Table Editors do not view design data in a free-form graphical
fashion and therefore they do not provide such rich visual layout possibilities.
Conversely, their automatic layout and sorting functions allow you to
concentrate on the model itself, rather than spending time fine-tuning the
layout. |