How to link from a diagram to another view

A view link is a link on a diagram that opens another diagram, a catalog or a board.

Why link views

A model’s diagrams, catalogs and boards sit in the Explorer as a tree, organised by the packages they belong to. That suits the people who build the model. It is a poor guide for someone who wants to understand it: the tree says where each view is kept, not which to read first or how one leads to the next.

View links let you connect views the way pages of a website are connected, so that people follow a path you have laid out and never have to search the tree. Use them to:

Present. Open one diagram and click through the rest in order, in a meeting or a review, without hunting for the next view.
Tell a story. Arrange links as numbered steps, “1. The customers”, “2. What they buy”, “3. How we deliver it”, so the model reads as a narrative with a beginning and an end.
Help people find their way. Make a contents page, or a set of tiles grouped by topic, as the front door to a model. A newcomer starts there and reaches any view in a click or two.
Connect related views. Put a link on a diagram to the catalog that lists its elements, to the board that tracks them, or to the diagram that shows the next level of detail.

The same views can be linked from many diagrams, so one model can carry several paths through it for different audiences.

A view link is part of the diagram it sits on, not part of the model. It is not an element, it does not appear in the Explorer or in catalogs, and it is not written to XMI or Ecore exports. Adding links changes how the model is read, never what the model says.

Add a link

Open the diagram the link should sit on
Drag a diagram, catalog or board from the Explorer onto the canvas

The link lands where you drop it, selected. It shows the icon of the kind of view it opens and that view’s name, in the link colour.

To find a view quickly, switch the Explorer to its list of views with the Show all views button on the Explorer toolbar. Every diagram, catalog and board in the project is listed there, and each can be dragged onto a diagram.

A diagram cannot link to itself
The same view can be linked from many diagrams, and more than once on one diagram
Viewers can follow links but cannot add or change them

Follow a link

Double-click the link, or right-click it and choose Open. The view opens as a tab, or comes to the front if it is already open.

Change what a link says

A link shows its view’s name, and follows that name when the view is renamed. To show something else on one link, such as “Start here” or “2. The customers”, give it a label:

Select the link and press F2, or right-click it and choose Edit Label
Type the label and press Enter

Press Escape to cancel. To go back to the view’s name, edit the label again and clear it.

A label belongs to that one link. It never renames the view the link points to; to rename the view, use the Explorer.

Move and resize

Drag a link to move it. With a link selected, drag one of its eight handles to resize it; a long name wraps within the width.

Links sit above the nodes of a diagram, so a link can be placed on top of a grouping box. It does not move when that box is moved.

Make link tiles

A link can be drawn with a border, which turns it into a tile:

Right-click a link and choose Show Border, or
Select the link and turn on Border in the Properties panel

To lay out a set of tiles:

Drag the views you want onto the diagram
Select all the links
Right-click one and choose Border > Show
Right-click again and choose Same > Size, then Align and Distribute

Links and nodes can be selected together, and Align, Same and Distribute work across both. With a node as the last one you clicked, Same > Size makes the links the size of that node.

Remove a link

Select the link and press Delete, or right-click it and choose Remove Link. Only the link is removed; the view it pointed to is untouched.

Saving and undo

Adding, moving, resizing, relabelling, bordering and removing a link are changes to the diagram, like moving a node. They are held until you save with Ctrl+S (Cmd+S), and can be undone and redone until then. See How to save, undo and redo.

See what links to a view

Select a diagram, catalog or board in the Explorer. If any diagram holds a link to it, the Properties panel shows a Linked from list. Click an entry to open that diagram.

When a view is deleted

Deleting a diagram, catalog or board removes every link to it, so a link never leads nowhere. The delete confirmation says how many links will go, for example “2 links to this diagram on other diagrams will also be removed.”

Deleting a diagram also removes the links that sit on it. The views they pointed to are not affected.

Copying and files

Clone a diagram: the copy has the same links, pointing to the same views. See How to clone a view.
Clone a package: a link to a view inside the package points to the copy of that view; a link to a view outside the package still points to the original. See How to clone a package.
Export a package: links to views inside the package are kept. Links to views outside it cannot be carried by the file, and the export tells you how many were left out.
Export the whole project: every link is kept.

Limits

FarkiBot does not create view links. When it modifies a model, links between that model’s package and views outside it are lost, in both directions.
Clone Project in the desktop app does not copy links that run from one top-level package to a view in another.
A link cannot be the end of a relationship. It is not an element, so a relationship to it would have no meaning.

How to create a child diagram: a drill-down diagram that belongs to one element
Context menus: view link
The diagram model: view links