Used sensibly coloured pen styles can aid your diagramming and communication

In this example coloured pen styles are used to collect themes in a very complicated diagram.

In this example of a conformance analysis of the SysML1.0 spec's Rate stereotype against the MD SysML 15 Plugin I have used:

• purple for things related to ActivityEdge
• blue for things related to Parameter
• cyan for things related to ObjectNode
• yellow for things related to <<Continous>> and <<Discrete>> (and yes, it is hard to read)

Please note:

• This technique ONLY works well when:
  • you use no fill colour at all
  • you use black pen colour be default otherwise (to afford contrast)
  • you DO NOT use the MagicDraw UML default colour schemes
    (which I recommend against for most work)

• I recommend that you reserve Red, Orange, and Green for my "traffic light" system:
  • use red to flag ERRORs: (means STOP! or DANGER!)
  • use orange to flag ISSUEs or refactoring or problems: (means PAUSE, slow down, rethink.)
  • use bright green (not shown) for OK, asserts has been tested and/or analysed and it PASSED (means GO!)
  • use the project options (clone the default) and create ERROR, ISSUE, and OK styles
    (rather than constantly having to remember which colours mean which)

• Other colours are used to collect related themes (such as in this case applications of the stereotype to different metaclasses). Note that:
  • you will run out of sensibly distinguished colours after about 5 (considering red, orange, and bright green are reserved)
  • yellow (deliberately left in) is not a good choice !

Please also always be mindful that not all people can see all colours well.

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