Domain Model Drawing improvements
For easing maintaining complex Domain Models I like to have the some improvements for the Domain Model drawing/displaying capabilities, inspired by the great drawing features available in the Microflow drawings, to improve readability.
- Resizing the height & width of Entity Boxes
The Domain Model drawings would be much better readable when it is possible to change the size of the Entity boxes, in a way similar to how you can do this in the Microflow modeler, allowing to change width and height for readability is something I highly would appreciate.
Often my attribute lines are truncated and I will be happy if I can make the box for the entity wider, e.g.:
and often the boxes are not high enough, with multiple relations this becomes a mess quickly.
- Hide Attributes
Have an option to hide attributes/properties in the Domain Model will also help to improve readability.
It will be nice if showing attributes is by default enabled and that you can select to hide them at entity level.
For entities with more than 20 attributes, it doesn’t make sense to display them all.
- Hide Datatypes
Have an option to Show or Hide the datatypes in the display of attributes could help too.
Datatypes are mainly of interest when creating/updating entities, when you just want to understand the Domain Model for development, most of the time data types are not needed in the diagram.
Just noticed new posts about the same idea:
I am still hoping the Domain Model drawing engine will be brought to the same level as the Microflow drawing engine…
In the Microflow modeler I have snap lines that allow me easily to align a box/activity with other objects in the drawing, see below:
Why am I not able to see in the Domain Model if I position my entity aligned:
It will be great and make Mendix Studio Pro more consistent to work with.
If attributes could be hidden, I would at the very least appreciate a little counter icon with how many attributes are hidden, so that it's always clear what is and what isn't visible.
@Alexander Keßler I like your suggestion to hide the text for data types and show an icon instead.
Hiding the attributes I would like to have as an option, in such case you would only have the entity and relation/association visible on the drawing tool, like:
And you would have to double click on the entity to see its fields.
Certainly for entities with many attributes the drawing becomes much more readable, in the assumption resizing the boxes for entities will be implemented by Mendix too (in case of many associations to an entity)
another Idea I just raised when I run into a problem that I had an association that cannot be selected to move the line to a different part on the entity:
https://forum.mendix.com/link/ideas/2176
Can perhaps be combined with the idea’s raised in this idea?
Submitted the same question in feedback recently for resizing the width of entity boxes but the feedback is gone now. Fully agree with the requests above and voted for it.
Thanks for your input Alexander, Icon’s for datatypes is even a better idea.
With the option to Hide attributes I mean that I want to have a choice.
If at Entity level I can just check a box to Show (default) or Hide, would be great in my view, certainly for Entities with more attributes than can show on screen, I would just like to show a bigger resized box without attributes. Still allowing to double click on it to see & manage the attributes.
Resizing the width of Entity Boxes
Resizing the Entities would be really helpful indeed.
Hide Attributes
I cannot agree on this one. For me this would be more confusing.
Hide Datatypes
Maybe instead of displaying the attribute type as text, change it to meaningful icons, eg. 123 for Integer, $ for decimal etc.