Editing Project Documentation

Software Ideas Modeler allows you to define a formatted description for any project item. It includes:

• Project Folder
• Diagram
• Element
• Field (Attribute, Operation)

You can edit the documentation of the folder, diagram, or element using the respective Properties dialogs:

• Folder
• Ribbon / Project (tab) / Documentation (group) / Folder Properties... (button)
• Menu / Project / Folder Properties...
• Diagram
• Ribbon / Diagram (tab) / Editing (group) / Diagram Properties... (button)
• Menu / Diagram / Diagram Properties...
• Element
• Ribbon / Model (context tab in Element context group) / Element (group) / Element Properties... (button)
• Menu / Element / Element Properties...

In the Properties dialog, switch to the Documentation tab to edit the documentation of the desired item.

Project Documents

You can also add a named document that will be a part of the project. It can be placed in the project folder in the same way as diagrams. To do it, right-click on a project folder and choose Add Other / Add Document from the displayed context menu. You can type any formatted text into the document and describe a part of your project this way. The Document item is best for documentation that cannot be associated with any specific diagram element.

Documentation Sidebar

Software Ideas Modeler offers Documentation sidebar. It allows you to edit the documentation of the selected element in the diagram editor.

Editing documentation in Documentation sidebar

If no element is selected, the open diagram documentation is displayed in the sidebar. In the top part of the sidebar, there is a title bar that shows the name of the edited element to prevent confusion. At the same time, it provides access to the menu that allows you to change the documentation editor context to the parent diagram or folder. If you click on the title bar or the down arrow next to the caption, it shows a menu with several items for the selected diagram element, its parent diagram, and folder. If a field (attribute, operation, etc.) is selected in the diagram editor the menu contains the name of the selected field, its owner element, parent diagram, and folder. If you click on a menu item, the context of the Documentation sidebar switches to the desired item, and you can see its documentation and edit it.

Changing documentation context

Documentation Editing in Diagram Editor

If an element has documentation defined, you can recognize it by a small document icon near the top left corner of the element. If you click on this indicator icon a floating window with a documentation editor will show. It allows you to edit the text of the documentation.

Documentation Editor

Software Ideas Modeler supports multi-part documentation. The parts are called sections. The documentation editor allows you to switch between the sections and edit their content. To switch to another section open the Section drop-down and choose the desired section. You can also add other custom sections using the Add button (with a plus icon placed on the right of the Section drop-down). If you do not need the custom section anymore, you can delete it using the Remove button (with an X icon).

Adding a new section to the documentation

Exportable Documentation

The documentation editor allows you to mark the documentation as exportable using the checkbox with the same name (placed under the documentation text editor). The exportable documentation is included in generated codes and documents. The non-exportable documentation is accessible only from Software Ideas Modeler.

Export Documentation to External Files

Software Ideas Modeler allows you to export complete project documentation to an external file in one of the standard document formats. Read more here about documentation generation and export.