Alternative Keyboard Navigation (Distributed System Designers)
A Distributed System Designers project contains many applications or servers that can have several connections associated with them. You can tab through all these applications, servers, systems, wires, and endpoints, using a hierarchical navigation scheme that allows you to quickly navigate through top level components.
Options for Keyboard Navigation
Navigating through a diagram using the Tab key.
Tab order moves in left-to-right, top-to-bottom order as determined by the midpoint of the object. For more information about navigating through a diagram's comments and wires, see Keyboard Shortcuts (Distributed System Designers).
Deleting Endpoints and Shape Connectors Using the Keyboard.
You can delete a shape connector from their parent shapes by selecting them and pressing the delete key, or by selecting the delete item from the context menu.
Connecting Shapes Using the Connection Dialog.
On large diagrams, it may be a complex operation to traverse the diagram to select two different endpoints, or you may be zoomed in on a particular portion of the diagram and not have the component that you wish to connect to in view. To facilitate difficult connections, with the Connection Tool on the toolbox selected, click a endpoint and press shift+F10 or the context menu key to raise a context menu, and then select "Connect…" from this menu.
Connecting Two Shapes Using Multi-Selection.
Select two shape connectors with compatible settings and press Enter on the Connection Tool item in the toolbox. When you complete the connection, the flow of communication runs from the first shape connector selected to the second.
If the settings of the two shape connectors are not compatible, you will receive an error beep indicating the operation is not valid, and no wire connecting the shape connectors appears on the design surface.
Manual Line Routing Using the Keyboard.
With an inflection point on a wire selected, using arrow keys will move the inflection point and re-route the wire.