Diagram Element with Multi-Line Names

The long names of diagram elements may be broken into multiple lines. If the name is too long to be displayed within specified bounds, it is broken automatically.

Software Ideas Modeler supports a special feature called natural line breaking. Especially in the software and technical diagrams, the names of elements do not contain spaces, but the names still be compound of several words. The particular words in the name may be separated by capitalization, underscores, or hyphens. Software Ideas Modeler can identify these breakpoints and break the long lines smartly by words, not in the middle of a word.

Turn On/Off Natural Line Breaks

If you do not like this feature or on the contrary if you want to apply it, but the software does not behave like this feature is activated, you may want to turn it off or on. Open the Options dialog, switch to Diagram Editor tab, and check or uncheck the Natural line breaks checkbox in the General group depending on whether you want to enable or disable this feature.

Natural line breaking
Insert a line break

Insert a Line Break to the Desired Position

Sometimes, you may need to break the text line in the desired position. When editing a multiline label or field it is easy, just press the ENTER and you insert a line break. However, most labels are single-line by default. If you press the ENTER, the editing of the current field will finish. Still, you can add line breaks to these fields, just press CTRL+ENTER.

This default behavior can be changed using Options form. Click on the File menu and choose Options to show Options form. Then switch to the Diagram Editor tab and in the Renaming group choose a desired option from the Action on ENTER press dropdown. There are these options available:

  • Default - the behavior described at the beginning of this chapter.
  • Always confirmation - the field editing ends always on the ENTER key press, a new line break is added using CTRL+ENTER.
  • Always new line - a new line break is added always using ENTER. The field editing ends when CTRL+ENTER is pressed.
Insert a line break
Insert a line break

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