Visual Studio Hacks

Generate Code from UML #81

Chapter 10, Work with Visual Studio Tools

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357

HACK

public string Year;

public virtual void Accelerate( )

{

}

public virtual void Decelerate( )

{

}

public virtual void Drive( )

{

}

public virtual void Start( )

{

}

public virtual void Stop( )

{

}

}// END CLASS DEFINITION Vehicle

As you can see, Visio does an adequate job of generating code for your

classes and can save you an immense amount of time, especially if you have

a class library with a lot of classes that contain a lot of properties.

Hacking the Hack

You’ve seen that Visio does a pretty decent job of generating your class code

right out of the box. But what if you didn’t quite like the way it generated

Figure 10-36. Generated class files in the Solution Explorer

358

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Chapter 10, Work with Visual Studio Tools

#81 Generate Code from UML

HACK

your code? Or maybe its format is a little off from your own way of writing

code. You can edit and/or create your own code generating templates so

that Visio generates code that way you like it.

To get to the code template editor, click UML

➝ Code ➝ Preferences. This

will bring up the Preferences dialog. Several options are found in this dialog,

but for the purposes of this hack, I focus on creating two new templates, one

for your own class template and another for your own property ...