Other activity diagram operations

This section provides information on the following additional operations that Process Designer Express provides on an activity diagram:

Opening and closing activity diagrams

Process Designer Express provides the ability to open and close an activity diagram.

Opening an activity diagram

To open an activity diagram, you can perform any of the following actions:

Closing an activity diagram

To close an activity diagram, you can perform any of the following actions:

Documenting an activity Diagram

There are two ways to document an activity diagram:

Printing a Diagram

You can print a graphic representation of each diagram, subdiagram, and iterator. Long representations print on multiple pages. To print, do the following:

  1. Open the diagram--select it in the template tree view and either right-click on its name and click Open Diagram from the context menu or select Open Diagram from the Template menu.
  2. Select Print from the File menu or use the shortcut key combination Ctrl+P.

Saving a diagram as a text file

You can save the entire activity diagram as a text file. To do so:

  1. Choose Save Diagram As Text File... from the Template menu.
  2. In the Save Diagram As Text dialog box, specify the file name.

Copying an activity diagram

You cannot copy an entire activity diagram apart from its scenario, but you can copy activity-diagram contents. To copy the contents of an activity diagram:

  1. Display the source activity diagram.
  2. Select the objects that you want to copy.
  3. On the Edit menu, choose Copy (Ctrl+C shortcut).
  4. Display the destination activity diagram.
  5. On the Edit menu, choose Paste (Ctrl+V shortcut).
  6. Revise the definitions of the symbols, as necessary, so that references to properties, ports, and variables are correct.

Note that copying is not an iterative process. If you copy and paste a subdiagram or iterator, Process Designer Express creates an empty activity diagram in the scenario tree, subordinate to the current diagram, to represent the subdiagram or iterator diagram. You must manually copy and paste the contents of the subdiagrams and iterator diagrams. If a break symbol is selected in an iterator node during the copy operation, it can be pasted only in another iterator node.

Important:
You cannot paste a duplicate Start symbol into an activity diagram. When selecting symbols to copy and paste, avoid copying the Start symbol to a diagram that already has one. If you keep the default User Preferences setting for diagrams, Process Designer Express automatically places the Start symbol in each new diagram. For more information, see "Changing display: user preferences".

Deleting within an activity diagram

To delete a symbol within an activity diagram, select the symbol to delete and take one of the following actions:

To delete an entire activity diagram, delete the scenario in which the activity diagram is defined. For more information, see "Deleting a scenario". For a scenario with subdiagrams or iterators, you can delete the subdiagram or iterator by deleting its symbol from its parent diagram.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003, 2004