EA Navigator 2.4 released

The main new feature of the version 2.4 of the EA Navigator is the Quicksearch. The Quicksearch feature is undoubtedly the fastest way to find anything in a (large) EA model. It is the type of feature which makes you wonder how you could live without it all that time before.

Developing the Quicksearch function was far from easy. I wanted something that resembles what Google does when you start typing, and I started things with a standard Windows Forms ComboBox. But after a while tinkering I finally had to give up and I started my own user control from scratch, combining a TextBox and a ListBox.

Furthermore the EA Navigator now no longer a strictly read-only add-in. With the feature to add an element to a diagram it now is able to make changes to a model for the first time.

Ad last but not least a lot of painfully boring work went into adding all the icons. The EA Navigator now uses more then 90 different icons in its tree.

What’s new in EA Navigator 2.4

Here are the changes for version 2.4.

Quicksearch

The Quicksearch feature is the new textbox on the top right of the EA Navigator window.

Quicksearch

Start typing in the Quicksearch box and you will get a list of all things in the model who’s name start with whatever you have typed.

Quicksearch_dropped

Hovering an item in the dropdown list will show you it’s fully qualified name in the tooltip.

Selecting an item will select it in the EA Navigator tree.

The Quicksearch also comes with a whole bunch of new options

Quicksearch_options

You can choose which types of items to search for, and with the Actions you can choose what to do when an item from the Quicksearch is selected.

Link to Element Feature navigation.

EA has the possibility to define links between features of an element such as Attributes or Operations using the Connect to Element Feature feature, which is very useful in a lot of situations.

Visually EA shows which feature is linked using brackets next to the connected Attribute or Operation.

LinkToElementFeature

The is all nice and dandy, but the downside of the story is that you can only see which features are linked by looking at the diagram.

Now with the EA Navigator you can simply navigate from one feature to the other

NavigateLinkToElementFeature

Add to Diagram

The add to diagram button will add the selected element in the EA Navigator tree to the currently opened diagram.

AddToDiagram

The element will be added to the top left corner of the diagram.

Navigate to GUID

A new button has been added that allows you to navigate to a GUID of an item in EA.

NavigateToGUID

Each item, elements, attributes, operations, diagrams, etc… has a unique id in the form of a GUID (example: {C06EF618-D57C-4f63-BF64-F5A5265694AE}).

Pressing the Navigate to GUID button will allow you to go to that element using it’s GUID. If there’s already a GUID in your windows clipboard then the EA Navigator will use that one. If not the EA navigator will show a dialog where you can past (or type) the GUID.

For elements shown in the project browser you can easily copy the GUID to your clipboard using the context menu Copy Reference|Copy Node GUID to Clipboard

CopyGUIDClipBoard

New Icons

The EA Navigator now shows correct icons for all possible element types in EA allowing you to easily see the difference between Use cases, Classes, Activities, etc..

The icons had become even more more important because of the Quicksearch function. When searching for an element it is especially useful to immediately which type it is.

Icons

Over 70 new icons has been added bringing the total number of icons used by the EA Navigator to 92.

Downloads

More Information

More information about the EA Navigator add-in for Enterprise Architect can be found here:

0 replies
  1. Ralf Lehmann
    Ralf Lehmann says:

    Hi,

    I just found your ea-addon thanks to goolge, but it seems that the downloadlink isn’t working any more.
    Would be great if you could fix this issue.

    Thank you

    Reply
    • Geert Bellekens
      Geert Bellekens says:

      Hi Ralf

      I just tested the link myself and I don’t seem to have an issue with it.
      The latest version is v2.4.8.0
      If it still doesn’t work please let me know what the exact error is that you are getting.

      Reply
      • Ralf Lehmann
        Ralf Lehmann says:

        Hi,

        sorry, this was my mistake – our proxy emitted an errormessage I misinterpreted.
        Seems like our proxy don’t likes googledrive. The older downloads from https://github.com/GeertBellekens/Enterprise-Architect-Toolpack/downloads work fine, even with our proxy.
        If it’s no big deal uploading the current version to github would be helpful for me and maybe other users as well. If not – I will probably manage it to get the download somehow.

        Thank you for sharing your great work, I’m looking forward to use it 🙂

        Reply
  2. Geert Bellekens
    Geert Bellekens says:

    Hi Ralf,

    Unfortunately github has closed it’s “downloads” section so I won’t be able to upload it there anymore.
    You can however also download it from the EA community site. http://community.sparxsystems.com/community-resources/496-free-and-open-source-add-in-ea-navigator
    Currently that is still a slightly older version 2.4.5.3, but I can update the page and upload a newer version. That will take 1 or two days since Sparx has to approve the changes first.

    Reply

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