Working with Families and Visual Styles

Opening and Saving families is done through the File menu.

To create a new family:

Choose File Ž New… Ž Acme family… from the application menu. You will need to indicate which project the file is to be added to. A new Acme file will be created with an empty family in it, and this file will be placed in the families directory of the project. An Acme Source editor and an style editor will be created.

To add a new type to the family:

Adding a new type to the family is a matter of either selecting the operations from the context menu, or selecting them from the Family menu (e.g., Family Ž New Component Type…). In both cases a dialog will open prompting you for more information. Selecting a type in this editor also displays more detail in the Element View, which will allow you to add additional detail to the type.

To edit the visual style:

By default, a family has no associated visual style, and use the default visual style for depicting elements in the diagram (or the style from its super family). To create a new visual style, double-click on the small depiction in the style editor. If a style does not exist, you will be asked if you want to create one. After this, you can edit the visualization shape, color, style, etc. Visual styles are associated with a type, and so all elements that declare this type in a diagram will be displayed according to its visualization.