Reverse engineer C++ to static structure

[Bob Altman]

Hi all,

I have VS 2005 Team Suite and Visio for Enterprise Architects. In VS, I
used the "Project->Visio UML->Reverse engineer" menu option to create a
Visio project from an native C++ app.

Now, I have a Visio project that displays all of my classes in the Model
Explorer. But the Static Structure chart is empty. I can drag classes from
Model Explorer to the Static Structure diagram, but there doesn't seem to be
any magic that displays the relationships between the classes.

Am I missing something? "Reverse engineering" my C++ classes to classes in
the Visio Model Explorer is a good start, but it doesn't get me very far
unless I can see how the classes are related.

TIA - Bob

[Barb Way]

I don't really use the UML solution, but here's what I understand...
After you Reverse engineer your app into Visio, it's up to you to place the
objects on the page into the Static Structure (or other) diagram. Any class
relationships should be generated as connectors as soon as you drop the
second class on the page. So you should be able to simply drop class1 on
the page, and then drop class2, and the defined relationship should appear
without any manual steps.

If that is not occurring, then it seems likely that the UML model didn't
get all the required information from your project. Make sure that you
rebuild any project before performing the Reverse Engineer action in Visual
Studio. Also check to see that your expected relationships are present in
the version you are initiating the Reverse Engineer from.

Barb Way
Product Support - Visio
Microsoft Corporation
[This posting is provided "As Is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.]
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[Bob Altman]

Barb, thanks for the quick reply!

At your suggestion, I tried dropping a wider variety of reverse engineered
classes onto the Static Structure page. It does auto-magically draw an
"inherits" arrow between two of my classes that have this relationship
(where the base class is abstract), but it doesn't draw any sort of
relationship between other classes that have this relationship (where
neither class is abstract). And it doesn't draw any sort of "contains" or
"uses" relationship between a class C1 that has a member variable of type C2
and a class C2 on the same page.

Bob

"Barb Way" <bar...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:c7mI9uy...@TK2MSFTNGHUB02.phx.gbl...

[Barb Way]

It seems that this is a limitation of the 'relationship' concept as Visio
is using it. However, I did see a help topic entitled "Contain elements
within a node in a UML deployment diagram" that may get you closer to your
goal.

BTW - I don't know if it relates to this situation, but the UML notation /
standard implemented in the Visio model is version 1.2.