Diagrams

Diagrams in Boldo are much more than simple drawing tools: they constitute a visual and interactive workspace, designed to represent, explore, and enrich your organization's knowledge.

Visualizing the Existing

Diagrams allow you to visualize assets already present in your inventory. You can thus map your applications, processes, systems, teams, or any other business entity, and understand at a glance their organization, interactions, and dependencies.

Building Rich Business Representations

A diagram is not static: it enriches itself according to your needs. You can add shapes, zones, annotations, and text to contextualize your assets, illustrate flows, responsibilities, or business scenarios. This graphical freedom allows you to create representations adapted to each use case: application architecture, process mapping, organizational chart, etc.

Prototyping and Imagining the Future

Boldo diagrams are not limited to the existing. You can add assets that are not yet in the inventory: simulate new systems, project evolutions, or prepare transformation scenarios. These elements can then be integrated into the official inventory.

Creating and Modifying the Inventory Visually

Boldo makes the diagram a true inventory creation and management tool:

• Add new assets directly from the diagram.
• Modify properties of existing assets without leaving the graphical view.
• Create, delete, or modify relationships between assets through simple drag-and-drop, to reflect your organization's evolution
  
  

A Bridge Between Modeling and Action

Thanks to this approach, the diagram becomes the convergence point between conceptual modeling (what you imagine) and operational management (what you actually possess). It promotes communication, collaboration, and alignment between teams, while ensuring the consistency and reliability of your inventory.

The Diagram Interface: A Structured and Intuitive Workspace

The diagram page in Boldo is designed to offer a fluid, powerful, and accessible experience to all users, whether they are architecture experts or simple business contributors. It consists of several functional areas:

1. The Catalog Panel (on the left)

The Catalog panel allows you to navigate between your views, graphics, nested maps, and diagrams.

2. The Central Canvas

This is the heart of the page, where you build and visualize your diagram.

You can:

• Position, connect, and organize your assets and shapes
• Navigate freely, zoom in/out, move the view
• Select one or more elements to move or modify them
  
  

3. Canvas Toolbars

To facilitate diagram creation and management, several toolbars are integrated directly on the canvas:

Left of the canvas: Element addition toolbar

This toolbar allows you to quickly enrich your diagram by adding different types of elements:

• Selection: Activate selection mode to choose one or more elements on the diagram. Simply click on an element to select it. For multiple selection, click and drag the mouse to draw a selection rectangle, or hold the Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (PC) key while clicking on multiple elements.
• Assets: Add assets to your diagram by clicking the dedicated button, then selecting the desired asset type in the vertical bar that appears on the right. You can then position the asset on the canvas by clicking at the desired location, or by dragging it directly from the toolbar. Once an asset type is selected, it becomes the default type, allowing you to add several quickly by simple click or drag-and-drop.
• Shapes: Insert shapes (rectangle or circle) to structure or illustrate your diagram. Select the desired shape in the toolbar, then click on the canvas or drag-and-drop to add it.
• Text: Easily add rich text areas to your diagram. Click the text button, then on the canvas, or drag-and-drop to position the text at the desired location.
• Cameras: Use cameras to highlight important areas of your diagram and facilitate navigation. Like other elements, place a camera on the canvas by clicking or dragging it from the toolbar. These cameras will then allow you to quickly zoom to key areas via the element list.
  
  

Top right:

A toolbar to automatically align selected elements, in order to obtain clear and well-organized diagrams. If you select elements, alignment will only be performed on the selection. Otherwise, the entire diagram will be aligned.

Bottom right:

A toolbar to manage the canvas itself: zoom, view adjustment, grid display, element alignment to grid, full-screen mode.

Above selected elements:

When a diagram element is selected, a toolbar appears above it. The possible actions depend on the type of selected element.

All element types

• Lock: Allows you to lock the element, preventing any involuntary movement or deletion
• Remove from diagram: Removes the element from the diagram
  
  

Assets

• Positioning: Allows you to modify the display order of the element on the canvas, making it pass in front of or behind other elements. This helps you visually organize object layering
• Appearance: Offers the possibility to customize the visual representation of the element. An asset can thus be displayed as a rectangle (default), circle, or point, to adapt to your readability or discretion needs on the diagram
• Add linked assets (present if the asset exists in the inventory): Allows you to quickly add assets directly linked to the selected element. This functionality facilitates inventory exploration and intuitive diagram design
• Show relationships (present if the asset exists in the inventory): Allows you to show or hide existing relationships between the selected asset and other assets in the diagram. This helps better understand interactions, dependencies, or connections within your organization
• Show details panel (present if the asset exists in the inventory): Opens the side panel dedicated to the selected element, where you can view and modify its properties, relationships, and access additional information for in-depth management
• Add to inventory (present if the asset does not exist in the inventory): Allows you to quickly add the asset to the inventory
  
  

Shapes

• Background color: Click this button to choose the shape's background color using the buttons located to the right of the toolbar
• Border color: Click this button to choose the shape's border color using the same buttons located on the right
• Texts
• • Bold, italic, underlined, strikethrough text: Click these buttons to activate transformations on the selected text portion
  • URL: Click this button to transform the selection into a hyperlink. To modify or delete a created link, click on the corresponding text portion and click respectively on the "pen" button or the "trash" button
  • H1, H2, H3: Use this button to apply a title style to your selection: H1 for a main title, H2 for a subtitle, and H3 for a lower-level title
  • Bullet list, ordered list: Use these buttons to transform the selection into a bullet list or ordered list
• Cameras
• • Name: Choose a name to easily find your camera in the right panel
  • Export as image: Click this button to export the area defined by the camera as an image file
• Bottom of canvas (multiple asset selection): You will find the same actions as above each element, allowing you to apply them to an entire selection.

4. Grouped Toolbar

If you select multiple "asset" type elements, an additional toolbar may appear at the bottom of the canvas, offering grouped actions (property modification, multiple relationship creation, mass deletion, etc.).

Relationship Toolbar

When you connect two elements together, by clicking and dragging from one of the purple circles present around an element to another element, a specific toolbar appears.

A list of possible relationships between the two assets appears. If the relationship already exists in the inventory, a book icon is displayed in front of its name.

You can delete or modify a relationship by clicking on it and clicking respectively on the buttons located to the left and right of the relationship name.

Connection of an asset present in the inventory to another asset present in the inventory

• A "reverse relationship" button allows you to reverse the source and destination of the relationship. If the relationship you are looking for between the two linked assets is not visible, it is possibly the direction of the relationship that is not correct.
• If you click on an existing relationship, it is immediately displayed on the diagram with the style defined in the metamodel.
• If the relationship does not yet exist, it is automatically created in the inventory and added to the diagram with the corresponding style.
  
  

Connection of an asset not present in the inventory with an asset present or not present in the inventory

• A list of possible relationships between the two asset types is displayed. Selecting one of these relationships will simply fill in the corresponding text field, without creating a relationship in the inventory.
  

Connection of a shape to any type of asset

• You can choose the name of the relationship.

5. The Detail and List Panels (on the right)

• Asset detail panel: When you select an asset on the diagram, this panel displays all its properties, relationships, and allows you to modify them directly by clicking the "pen" button.
• Diagram element list panel: This panel gives an overview of all elements present on the diagram (assets, shapes, texts), facilitating navigation, selection, and management of all content.