Nevron Diagram for .NET: The Documentation
At the end of my last session with Nevron's Diagram for .NET, I had realized that the tool was sufficiently unique that I was going to have to break down and read at least some of the documentation before I could do anything with it. <sigh>. In fact, <big sigh>.
I'll put on my technical writer hat: The documentation URL that Nevron gave me took me straight to the overall help page for Nevron's .NET Vision Package. The Treeview on the left pointed me to Diagram for .NET. The first item under Diagram for .NET was a single paragraph describing the product. I appreciated that: you'd be amazed how many blurbs I receive about products where I can't figure out what the heck the product does -- see my technical writing blog to watch me whine about that The second item in the treeview brought me to a more technical description of the product.
I finally realized that I wanted the "Getting Started" entry in the treeview (<duh>). This opened with exactly the kind of information that I was looking for -- accompanied by a graphic waaaaaaay too big to fit in my browser window (Figure 1). This was my first disappointment in working with the Help system -- despite my best efforts at bumbling around I had found the information that I wanted... but I couldn't read it.
[Click on image for larger view.] |
| Figure 1.This diagram is a great way to explain to new developers what the elements of a Nevron diagram are. It's too bad that it's so wide. |
However, I persevered and, helped by the documentation, I'm starting to get the hang of the package. The author of the Help guide does an excellent job of introducing fundamental concepts and tying them to stuff that I already know.
I think that I'm ready to start using the controls. It looks like I need a document drawing object and a document view object on my form to get started. Then I'm going to try drawing a diagram.
Posted by Peter Vogel on 04/30/2010