Modeling Features › The Theme Editor › Overview of Themes

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Overview of Themes

Themes are groupings of font and color settings and can be attached to various objects in the following manner:

Model - to replace the Default Theme that a new model uses.

Subject Area - to override the model's Theme

Diagram - to override its owner's Theme (Model or Subject Area)

Entity, View, Cached View, Annotation, or Attribute - to override the diagram's Theme

Drawing Object - to override all other Themes. However, you cannot do an override on an attribute since attributes have no drawing objects. At the drawing object level, individual characteristics of a Theme can be overridden once you select a Theme.

Example_Override a Theme for a Drawing Object

CA ERwin Data Modeler determines the font and color information to use by searching in the following order:

  1. Drawing Object
  2. The model object being represented, if one exists
  3. Diagram
  4. Subject Area, if the Diagram is owned by a Subject Area
  5. Model

Font and color selections can be hardened to prevent unwanted changes to a Theme from affecting an object. The r7.x concept of "Apply to New Objects" no longer exists - you harden existing settings and then change Themes.

Example of hardening font or color settings

Within a Theme, there are some "default" settings that you can override per object type. Specific settings are available for the following objects:

If you want to know how a change to a Theme will affect your model, review the Where Used tab:

Theme Editor Where Used Tab