Custom Views
Models, especially large models, can be hard to navigate. LightSpeed provides several options to help you visualise your model more easily.
Filtering
You can filter your view to show only selected entities. This can be useful for locating the part of the model you’re interested in or for visualising model behaviour.
To filter the model, open the LightSpeed Model Explorer, select how you want to filter the view and enter the string to be matched. For the convenience of keyboard users, you can also use a prefix character on the filter string instead of clicking the “Filter by” option.
| Filter By | Prefix | Effect |
| Name | (none) | Shows only entities whose names contain the filter string. The string is treated as a regular expression, so you can perform simple pattern matching. |
| Tag | # | Shows only entities with a matching tag. Entities with no tags at all are always shown. Tags are a convenient way of labelling a related set of entities. You can set tags using the Tags property. An entity can have more than one tag. |
| Aggregate | @ | Shows only entities which are part of the named aggregate specified by the filter string. An entity is part of the named aggregate if it has an association on which that aggregate is specified. |
| ! | Inverts the filter: that is, entities which match the filter are hidden instead of shown. (This can be specified only through a prefix, not through the Filter By drop-down.) |
You can optionally show additional entities which, although they don’t match the filter themselves, are related to entities that do. This help you to see the filtered entities in context.
| Show Option | Effect |
| Show selected | Shows only entities which match the filter. |
| Show associated | Also shows entities which have an association (one to many, one to one or through association) with the entities which match the filter. Only one level of association is followed; indirectly associated entities are not shown. |
| Show load graph | Also shows entities which are eager loaded by an entity which matches the filter. The full eager load graph is shown, not just immediately associated entities. Only “always eager load” associations are considered; optionally loaded associations via named aggregates are not shown (but can be shown using the @ filter). |
| Show inheritance | Also shows the base and derived classes of the entities which match the filter. Sibling classes are not shown: if you need to understand the full hierarchy, enter a filter which matches the root of the hierarchy. |
QuickViews
To save the current filter, right-click the model and choose View > Save Current as QuickView.
To reload a saved filter, right-click the model, choose the View submenu and select the name of the saved view. Note that LightSpeed saves and re-applies the filter definition: if the model has changed, the result of the filter may be different from before.
You can rename, edit and delete QuickViews via the Quick Views folder in the LightSpeed Model Explorer.
The View submenu also contains commands to quickly filter by tag, if any tags are defined in the model, and to remove all filtering and show the entire model.