Best practices for diagram design

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A class diagram is just a view of a part of a model, and might not show all aspects. But it is an important illustration for human understanding of the model. This page contains best practices for creating clean and consistent class diagrams that are easier to understand.

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Required diagrams

ISO19103 - Conceptual Schema Language have rules and recommendations for documentation of models, including which diagrams that should be a part of the documentation.

Designing class diagrams

• Use of colours and fonts in UML diagrams.

• Less is more - few elements and few perspectives for one diagram

• Orthogonality - arrange elements and connectors orthogonally

• Illustrate classes from other standards

• Avoid crossing lines

• Parent elements above child elements

• Harmonize sizes

• Illustrating constraints

Model documentation

• Exporting diagrams to image files
• Automated documentation of models