Object Lists

PowerDesigner object lists provide a spreadsheet-like interface for manipulating large quantities of objects. They offer you an overview of the objects in your model and can save you time and effort in managing your metadata. While property sheets provide depth of detail for individual objects, lists allow you to select and manipulate multiple objects simultaneously to streamline creation and improve consistency.

Lists of all the major objects in your model are available under the Model menu or by right-clicking your model in the Browser and selecting List of objects . Each list shows all the objects of that type in the currently selected package or model, including those that do not have symbols in the current diagram:

The properties of the listed objects are organized in columns. You can order the list by a particular columns values by clicking on its column header. You can control which property columns are displayed, and also filter the list based on the values in any of the columns (see Customizing object list columns and filtering lists).

You can select multiple items in a list by Ctrl-clicking them in the far-left, numbered column. To select all the items in a list, click the top-left corner box. When multiple items are selected, any edits you make to properties are applied to all the selected items.

Note: By default, you must click the Apply button to commit changes or the OK button to commit and close the list. To have changes commited immediately when you enter them in a field, enable the Auto commit general option (see Dialog Box General Options). You can always use the Undo tool to cancel the change.

All or some of the following tools are available on object lists:

Tool	Description
	Opens the property sheet of the selected item (see Object Properties).
	[ordered lists only] Inserts a row before the selected row in the list.
	Adds a row at the end of the list.
	Opens an object selection dialog box to select objects and copy them to the list (see Adding an Item from a Selection List).
	Creates a new object and opens its property sheet to allow you to complete its definition.
	[CDM only] Opens an object selection dialog box to reuse objects. When you select an item you create a link to the original instead of copying it to the list.
	Cuts the row and stores it in the Clipboard.
	Copies the selected row to the Clipboard.
	Pastes the contents of the Clipboard.
	Deletes the row.
	Opens the Find dialog to search for an item in the list.
	Finds the object's symbol in the diagram.
	Opens the Customize Columns and Filter dialog to change the columns displayed in the list or define a filter (see Customizing Object List Columns and Filtering Lists).
	Enables/Disables the filter specified in the Customize Columns and Filter dialog.
	Includes objects in sub-packages in the list.
	Includes composite objects (such as sub-processes, sub-activities, sub states, etc.) in the list.
	Includes object shortcuts (see Shortcuts) in the list. Shortcuts are grayed as they cannot be modified. When you include shortcuts whose target model is closed, some information may be unavailable.
	[Related Diagrams tab] Opens a target model or a diagram (see Specifying Diagrams as Related Diagrams).
	Opens an object selection list to change the target object of a shortcut

Sub-Object Lists

Many objects have property sheets that contain sub-object lists, which list all of the child objects of that type belonging to the object. For example, the Columns tab in a table property sheet displays the list of columns in the selected table:

These lists provide the same features as the lists of objects available from the Model menu. Depending on the properties of the listed objects, the list may have a natural order that you can control. For example, a list of columns has such an order, and you can move objects in the list by selecting them and then clicking on one of the arrows at the bottom left corner of the list.