Thursday, April 17, 2008

Delphi Tips and Tricks: Model View

I've been using the model view quite a bit lately and it's a little uh, well, ugly and difficult to navigate. There is an option, although not widely known and a bit burried, that makes the model view a whole lot more usable. Although this option isn't "preferred by modelers" it sure does help us coders use it.

To enable the simplified Model View go to Tools | Options, scroll down the tree to Together | Default | Diagram | Model View and change View type from Model-centric to Simplified.



Updated: Here are two screen captures from the Model View before and after toggling the option. This is after creating a new Delphi VCL Application. Can you figure out which one is which?



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just made a couple of new applications and switched the setting but could not see any differences. Can you summarise what the differences are for us non-modellers, please. I opened the help in D2007 and it does not even mention the Simplified option. Typical! CodeGear: you still have a long long way to go with the help.

Xepol said...

Never used it, kinda doubt I ever will...

I learned a long time ago that modeling is an interesting way to spitball ideas, lay out data structures and such, but after that it bore little resemblance to real code.

Using a modeling tool that directly writes code seems too much like trying to code without half your keyboard - a lot of arbitrary restrictions on how you accomplish a task that have more to do with conceptual modeling ideals than coding itself.

Personally, I wish that borland hadn't followed this particular course that it remained a stand alone company that I could choose not to subsidize simply by not paying for it seperately.

I suspect that if you offered a parallel set of SKUs without the modeling with a reduced price tag, it would be surprisingly popular compared to with.

Jan Derk said...

May I ask why you use the Together model view quite a bit? I am curious because I do not know anyone who uses it.

Chris Bensen said...

Hi Richard,

I updated the post with a couple screen captures from the Model View.

Chris Bensen said...

Hi Xepol,

Exactly, modeling is great to layout the architecture of a program or get a view of it at a glace. Of course it helps if you have a larger monitor. I find modeling works much better on my home monitor.

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