New features and improvements in ERM Diagram 4.1
ERM Diagram has been our flagship product for 3 years now and will continue to be developed and enhanced to meet the competitive and complex diagramming market. Originally conceived as a visual designer for our Cortex and ObjectBases systems, it has grown into a fully fledged diagramming package with the release of version 4.0.
That said there is still some work to be done to ensure ERM Diagram remains one of the premier diagramming components.
New features in version 4.1
- Connector improvements. Reducing the number of bends is the number one request we've received for this class. We've adjusted the routing algorithm to reduce the bends where possible. We've also added bridges so that connectors crossing other connectors display a little jump (bridge), if required. Connectors will now only route around other elements in the same layer.
- Interactive Mode improvements. The event model and the information available when adding elements interactively at runtime has been greatly enhanced following feedback from developers. It should be a lot easier to determine whether the user can add a element at runtime given the way he/she has drawn the element onto a model.
- Element rotation. This isnt a commonly requested feature and so we left it out of the initial release of version 4.0. However version 4.1 will have full support for local rotation of a solid element through the ITransformable interface.
- Stencil Designer. Creating custom shapes through GraphicsPath code is one of the hardest and most commonly raised support issues. The new stencil designer will be part of Diagram Studio and will allow you to visually change and add new stencil items through a new FileStencil class.
- Animation. We'll be adding an animation timer, an IAnimatable interface, an Animate class and Animate event so that code can be run to create dynamic diagrams. You'll simply set up the animation features like the number of steps and the time between steps and modify the appearance of the element accordingly. The rendering and painting of the affected elements will be optimised automatically to ensure minimum impact on performance.
- Ruler highlights. The Ruler class will be enhanced to provide better feedback in relation to the user interaction with the diagram.
- Miscellaneous. There will be new keyboard shortcuts for zooming, undo/redo improvements and many more small enhancements that have been added since the launch of version 4.0.