UML shapes

A shape is a textual and graphical element that represents an application component in a Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram.

As the following figure illustrates, a shape can contain the name, fields, and methods of a Java™ class that are displayed as name, attributes, and operations in their respective compartments.

The image shows a shape that represents a Java class in UML notation.

Shape properties govern the appearance of shapes in a diagram. For example, each shape has a Line Color property that you can specify for the color of the shape's borders and drop shadows.

You can specify property values for shapes to do the following things:

Related concepts
UML diagrams
Connectors in UML diagrams
Related tasks
Customizing default settings for shapes
Managing the appearance of shapes
Making shapes the same size
Changing the order of shapes in stacks
Repositioning shapes
Managing shape compartments
Filtering and sorting compartment items
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