Benefits of Shape Legend
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Annotate a shape with an element title for non-technical people or stakeholders -
Add additional dimension to elements' definition (e.g. Different urgency of BPMN tasks represented by different colour code) -
Have the legend appear in exported images for annotation purposes -
Mass update of shapes' formats for shapes in same type (i.e. created from same legend item) -
Stay focused by constructing a diagram from a trimmed down list of shape types (Forget about the palette!) -
Improve the correctness of design by restricting team members to create diagrams from a given list of shape types -
Flexibly add and remove elements to and from Shape Legend -
Make a diagram more readable for non-technical people or from other discipline
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Visual Paradigm will show only the connectable set of links for two different shapes through the Resource Catalog. -
Visual Paradigm will show only the subset of shapes in the Shape Legend through the Resource Catalog.
Hands on
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Right-click on the background of the diagram where you want to apply Shape Legend, and then select Presentation Options > Show Legends from the popup menu. You should see the Legend pane appear at the bottom right of the diagram. -
Click on Add Shape Legend and select New Shape Legend from the drop-down menu.
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Select the type of shape that can be drawn on this diagram. Name it and configure its appearance.
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Click OK to confirm. -
Repeatedly add the other shape types into Shape Legend.
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To create shapes from Shape Legend is like creating shapes via the palette in that all of the commands you can use on a palette are viable in Shape Legend. Here are some typical commands: -
Drag on a shape type in Shape Legend and drop it into to create a shape -
Click on a shape type in Shape Legend and click once on the diagram to create it -
Double-click on a shape type in Shape Legend to lock it, and click multiple times on the diagram to create multiple instances of that shape
The figure below shows an example of Capability Map drawn using Shape Legend. -