This describes top-level operations on diagrams. Logged-in or not, you can immediately start changing any unrestricted diagram, or create your own, from public metadata. Create new shapes by expanding shape items, or drag nodes from the Metadata tree and drop them in the drawing area. Several flags make diagrams and metadata visible and accessible to end users. As Premium subscriber, you get full access to protected metadata and diagrams, including other privileges restricted in the free online version.

Diagram and Metadata Access

All preloaded metadata has been structured in products with containers (assemblies, components, databases etc), each with one or more groups (packages, namespaces, database schemas) including type declarations, with type members. It is all available for public browsing. However, some products, containers and groups may have been protected and only Premium subscribers can save diagrams with shapes from their types.

Some diagrams and metadata products/containers/groups are marked by us as recommended and appear in bold, diagram titles prefixed by a star. Select a specific platform if you are interested only in a particular programming language or section: .NET, ActionScript, PHP, databases etc.

Public diagrams can be fully accessed, published on other sites, visualized, cloned and customized, by any regular user. Anyone can extend or create public diagrams, from unprotected metadata. Protected diagrams can be opened and visualized only by Premium subscribers. To the regular user they appear only by their grayed title text, documentation and thumbnail. Subscribers can also create private diagrams (for their eyes only), or protected diagrams from protected metadata.

Diagram States

In edit mode, anyone can instantly start to “draw” a new diagram, customize or clone a diagram he has access to. However, you need at least a free user account to be able to save the diagram as your own. Owned diagrams (which appear first, in italic, when logged in) are created by you and saved by you. Nobody else can delete them or save modified versions: they could only clone, customize and save them as their own copies. Cloned diagrams will be listed with link to their original diagrams, giving credit to the initial creator

Each time you save your diagram in the editor, it becomes a draft, a work-in-progress. It is temporarily removed from the public lists of diagrams, and only you can see it, with its title underlined. To generate static images and printable PDF from it, and to make it publicly available in the diagram page, you need to publish it. Don’t click the Publish icon too often, but only when you’re satisfied with your changes. And try to not publish messy or unfinished diagrams, it would be a waste of time for people looking for useful information.

Finding and Loading Diagrams

The Editor always creates one New Diagram entry by default, and other new diagrams can be added with click on the “+” tab. There can be not more than 10 new or loaded diagrams at a time.

Browse the existing diagrams in the list of all or just recommended published diagrams (most recent on top), Editor’s list of Diagrams, the RSS feeds. Filter eventually by keywords or platform.

Different techniques to create or load a diagram:

1. Create a new diagram by a click on the + tab caption.
2. From a metadata page, click “Diagram It!”. A new diagram will be created in the Editor, with a new expanded shape representing or related to the metadata object.
3. Click the Edit button from a published diagram page, on this site or external blogs.
4. From the Diagrams tab, drag and drop a diagram node over any other diagram opened in the drawing area. Or simply double-click on that node.