Eclipse plug-in: ObjectAid UML Explorer Class Diagram: export in higher resolution

Question

I am using ObjectAid UML Explorer to generate a UML Class Diagram from my code.

I need to include the output PNG in a LaTeX document and what I get is way too low resolution for inclusion.

How can I get higher resolution output from the Eclipse plug-in?

I can see the internal format of a .ucls file is just XML:

<class-diagram version="1.0.10"...

Is there a way to get something more dense than 72dpi or something in a scalable format, say EPS or similar? The target document is > 300dpi so 72dpi does not even come close, unfortunately. Whatever rasterises the XML definition has to accept a trap and a pluggable module?

I need something that plugs into the auto-save mechanism of ObjectAid...

Answer 1

Not possible until ObjectAid implements the feature...

Answer 2

I've found a dirty but easy solution to the problem.

By printing the diagram to a PDF, e.g. with programs like PDFCreator, you gain a vector graphic in the PDF. With a graphics editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Gimp you can raster the PDF to a high quality PNG.

It worked fine for me.

With ObjectAid's Diagram Add-On you can make some customizations regarding the printing scale. There's also the possibility to save the diagrams as SVG image, which you can convert to a high quality pixel image, too.

Answer 3

Did you try to use a cropping/design tool such as snagit which would crop a copy of your computer screen and export it in high definition such as an image or directly paste and copy inside a word document ?

I have the same problem than you for providing documentation of my java code. I use EclipseUML Omondo but the image export is pretty poor too. I now prefer to use specific cropping tool for my image export which is a lot better.

I mean that you create the view you need on your computer screen then crop it and paste it in your documentation. I like to use the snagit's paste and copy feature with Microsoft word.

My favorite tool for cropping my UML diagrams is snagit.

Answer 4

Although it's not glamorous, what I did was go into Window | Preferences | General | Appearance | Colors and Fonts inside Eclipse and set all the text fields to double their size.

This created a larger diagram and the export was therefore in a higher res.