Using Themes

The Themes ribbon on the Styling tab enables you to apply styles and filters to elements in your model based on conditions you set. You can pre-determine aesthetic values for entities and relationships that meet the criteria set in your conditions, and you can use filters to automatically hide those elements from your model.
  1. Click the Define button on the Themes ribbon in the Styling tab.
  2. Click Add.
  3. Enter a name for the theme and click Add.
  4. Select from the list of styles or filters that you want to include in your theme. You can choose from entity decorations, relationship decorations, gradients, or filters.
  5. Click Add Conditions.
  6. Select the property for which you want to create a condition and apply a theme. For example, you could select a property called "Date" and complete the expression to say "Equals" and "09/11/2001".
  7. Edit the options for your style or filter to configure the theme.
  8. Click OK twice.
Once a theme is defined, you can click Define > Apply or select it from the Themes drop-down to apply it to your model. You can also modify and delete themes by clicking Define, selecting a theme, and then clicking Modify or Delete.
If you have a theme that contains characteristics you would like to include in another theme, you can make a copy of the first theme, rename it, and alter it accordingly. For example, you could have a model with entities that represent states, and one of the fields in your model's database is population. You could create "Theme 10" for states with a population of more than 10,000,000 and set those entities' fill color as green (among other settings, such as the shape of the entity or an image used in place of a shape). If you wanted to call out states with a population of at least 5 million but no more than 10 million, you could copy Theme 10, save it as "Theme 5", and change the Fill Color to blue. That way, entities representing large states would look different from entities for the remaining states in your model, and they would look similar to each other, but just different enough that you can see which have a population of 5 million to 10 million and which have a population of 10 million or more.
To copy a theme:
  1. Click Define.
  2. Select a theme from the list and click Copy.
  3. Enter a name for the new theme in the Name field.
  4. Click Add to apply additional settings to the theme, or click Modify to alter the existing settings for the theme.