Chapter 2 Getting Started with PowerDesigner

Getting Started with the PowerDesigner Plugin for Eclipse

During your installation of PowerDesigner, you can choose to install a plugin to allow you to use PowerDesigner within your Eclipse environment.

Eclipse-specific features
For information about PowerDesigner features specific to Eclipse, see the Working with the PowerDesigner Plugin for Eclipse chapter.

When you launch the Eclipse platform for the first time, it opens the workbench window, which initially displays the Resource perspective. A perspective defines the initial set and layout of views in the workbench window.

The Resource perspective contains different views:

The Navigator view displays a tree view of the projects and their resources
The Editor area displays the content of the projects and resources
The Outline view displays a content outline of the file being edited. (Except for a plain text file)
The Tasks view lists and marks all the tasks and problems to be solved

Click the title bar of a view to make it active. (The title bar turns blue). The name of the active perspective is shown in the title bar of the window and its icon is pushed-in in the shortcut bar. We recommend you use the PowerDesigner perspective.

PowerDesigner Eclipse plugin for Sybase Workspace
The PowerDesigner plugin for Sybase Workspace, which is called Enterprise Modeling, includes all the features of the standard PowerDesigner plugin for Eclipse. When modeling within the Sybase Workspace environment, we recommend that you use the Enterprise Modeling perspective.

To activate the PowerDesigner perspective:

Click the Open a Perspective icon in the shortcut bar and select Other, or select Window→Open Perspective→Other, to open the Select Perspective dialog box:

Select PowerDesigner in the list of perspectives, and then click OK.

The workbench window displays the PowerDesigner perspective.

Using the shortcut bar
Once you have activated the PowerDesigner perspective, a PowerDesigner icon is displayed in the shortcut bar, which you can click when you need to activate the PowerDesigner perspective