Common customizations

This section is intended to be a sort of FAQ for commonly-needed customizations. Each topic in the section provides task-oriented specifics on how to do the specific configuration modification. Here is a summary of the topics in the section.

Topic Title

Description

Association direction

How to make Association links display a directional arrow; how to specify Association type (e.g. Aggregation, Composition)

Source file header

How to change the text of the default source file header (prologue) for generated code

Configuring for C++

How to customize the default definitions for C++ source and header files, configure default library support, and more.

Customizable source code templates

How to work with the source code and text templates.

Templates vs Blueprints

Templates are now in place instead of the blueprints.

Stereotypes

Populate stereotype lists, modify default stereotype values, and specify RGB color values for stereotypes, etc.

Inspector properties

Modify the property names and/or default values in properties Inspectors, add your own properties, or delete properties you don't want.

Hide and show elements

How to set options to hide specific types of diagram elements from view .

Source Code formatting

How to set options to control the formatting of your source code.

Tool integrations

How to create and modify external tool definitions that create menu commands enabling you to launch or interact with your development tools and environment.

Version Control integration

How to set up Together and projects to interact with version control.

See Guide to the Options pages for additional information on the Options dialog customization facilities.

Association direction


  1. Launch the Options dialog.

  2. Use Advanced to select the configuration level if necessary

  3. Select theDiagram tab.

  4. Expand the Associations node.

  5. Set the value of Draw directed as desired.

  6. Click OK.

This option applies only to Association links whose "directed" property in the link Inspector is set to "Automatic". If it is set to "Directed" or "Undirected" then the link will be always display according to that setting, regardless of the value set for this option.

Tip: You can also set Show as attributes so that attributes that are displayed as links show in the attributes section of classes.

Source file header


  1. Launch the Options dialog.

  2. Use Advanced to select the configuration level if necessary

  3. Select the Source Code tab.

  4. Expand the appropriate language node and open Formatting options.

  5. Expand Default Prologue/Epilogue node.

  6. Edit the default text to whatever you want. For example: "Generated for XYZ. Corp. Copyright (c)1999. Company confidential."

Customizable Source Code Templates

This features allows to significantly speed up the coding process and avoid misspellings. See Defining Source Code Templates in the Editor section of the User Guide.

Templates vs Blueprints

Blueprints are replaced with Templates. Select Directory tab of the Explorer to see the list of available templates. See Using Code Templates.

Stereotypes

Customizing stereotypes is a low-level configuration task and requires Java programming. See Advanced Customization: Customizing Property Inspectors for more information.

Inspector properties

Customizing inspector properties is a low-level configuration task and requires Java programming. See Advanced Customization: Customizing Property Inspectors for more information.

Hiding and showing elements


  1. Launch the Options dialog.

  2. Use Advanced to select the configuration level if necessary

  3. Select the View Management page.

  4. Expand the Show node.

  5. To hide the elements defined by one of the options (Inheritance links, for example), clear the option checkbox. To re-show elided elements, check the option box.

For more information see Vew Management 'Show' options

Note that individual elements can be hidden in diagrams using the Diagram speedmenu. If you don't see an element in a diagram, and the element is not hidden by View Management options, choose Show Hidden from the Diagram speedmenu and check the hidden elements list.

You can define filtering expressions for the User-Defined options under the Show options of View Management page. Study the expressions in the pre-defined Show options to see how you can show or hide different elements.

The other options on the View Management page of the Options dialog may hide some kinds of information. For example, Diagram Detail Level can hide visibility symbols.

Source Code formatting

To customize source code formatting options:

  1. Launch the Options dialog.

  2. Use Advanced to select the configuration level if necessary

  3. Select the Source Code page.

  4. Expand the node for Formatting Options and set sub-options as desired.

Tool integrations

To customize the compiler, external editor, or debugger definition:

  1. Launch the Options dialog.

  2. Use Advanced to select the configuration level if necessary

  3. Select the Tools page.

  4. Expand the node of the tool definition you want to edit (e.g. Compiler).

  5. If you want to change the text that appears on the menus that launch the tool, edit the tool name field.

  6. If you want to change the command that launches the tool (specify a different compiler, for example), edit the Command field. Specify any command-line parameters in the the Parameters field.

  7. If you want to change which menu(s) in which the the tool command appears, expand the Show in menu node and check the desired menus.

  8. Modify other options for the tool as necessary. Refer to the in-dialog Help texts for information about each option.

Version Control integration

Together comes pre-configured for the CVS version control system (automatically installed) and version control support is enabled in the system by default. If you already use a SCC-compliant version control, you can change your configuration to use that system.

Version control is not automatically enabled for projects... you need to enable it and specify the version control system project to use when you create the Together project (or later in Project Properties).

To enable or disable version control integration support:

  1. Launch the Options dialog.

  2. Use Advanced to select the configuration level if necessary

  3. Select the Version control page.

  4. Check or clear the Enable version control checkbox.

To enable version control for a project:

  1. Click Advanced in the New Project dialog (if creating a new project) or the Project Properties dialog (for an existing project).

  2. Check the Version control project box to enable version control.

  3. Click Select. Select the source control project in the currently configured version control system (CVS or your SCC-compliant system).

For more information, including what Together files to place under version control, see User's Guide: Using Together with a Version Control System.