General Settings Display Preferences

The General Settings category allows you to control the general look of the diagram.

The following preferences are available on the General tab:

Property	Description
Window color	Sets the background color for the diagram.
Unit	Specifies the measurement unit for symbol size. You can choose between inches, millimeters, and pixels.
Snap to grid	Automatically aligns all new objects that you create in the diagram window to the anchor points of a grid. You can specify the size and visibility of the grid with the Display and Size options. All existing objects are aligned automatically when you move them within the diagram.
Display	Activates a grid in the background of the diagram.
Size	Determines the number of anchor points per square inch in the grid.
Show page delimiter	Shows limit of pages on the diagram background
Constrain labels	Limits the distance to which you can displace labels from link objects. Uncheck this option to be able to move link labels anywhere in your diagram.
Organization unit swimlane	[diagrams with swimlanes] Specifies that organization units will be displayed as swimlanes. When this options is selected, you may also specify the direction of the swimlanes, in choosing between Horizontal and Vertical.
Darken Child Symbol	[diagrams with composite symbols] Specifies that the symbols of child objects are darker than those of their parents in order to make them stand out more.
Orientation	[diagrams with tree structures] Specifies the direction in which branches will expand. You can choose between Horizontal and Vertical.

The following preferences are available on the Word Wrapping tab:

Preference	Description
Name Splitting	Controls the display of names on symbols. You can choose between: None Truncation - Truncates name (or code), to the specified length Word wrapping - Wraps name and code text onto additional lines (up to the specified length) after the specified wrap character (up to the indicated length)
Wrap characters	Specifies a set of characters after which word wrapping is possible.
Display overlay for non-local objects	Enables the display of an overlay on objects being reused in the same container but with distinct location. For instance an activity can be reused under another activity of the same package or an inner class can be referenced by another class of the same package. The overlay is a mirror image of the shortcut overlay (see Shortcuts).

The Format tab can be used to set the default size for all symbols in the diagram. Values entered here can be overridden for specific objects on the Format tab for each object type (see Format Display Preferences).