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.
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: