System Architect provides stylesheet functionality that enables you to specify what symbols look like as you and other team members draw them on diagrams. The stylesheet is actually a file that contains the settings of every symbol and line type that may be drawn in a diagram. There are settings for shape, color, font, line thickness, and so on.

You may want each user to use their own stylesheet, or, you may choose to have all users use the same stylesheet.

You can create multiple stylesheets. Only one can be used by you at a time.

Using Help > About will tell you the location of the stylesheet in use. If it only says AUTOEXEC.STY then it has been loaded from that file in the encyclopedia’s Files table. When you open an encyclopedia, the stylesheet that is used is the one that System Architect’s sa2001.ini file specifies. So the stylesheet that you use as a default could be in any directory on your local hard drive or on the network. The exception to this is if an encyclopedia that you open has a stylesheet named autoexec.sty in its Files table; if it does, that is the stylesheet that will be used by you and all other users upon opening that encyclopedia. After opening that encyclopedia, you could change the stylesheet that you are using by selecting Format > Stylesheet > Open. You can store the stylesheet in the encyclopedia as autoexec.sty by opening a diagram and selecting Format > Stylesheet > Set Encyclopedia. You can also change the stylesheet in the configuration of the encyclopedia by selecting Tools > Customized Method Support > Encyclopedia Configuration.

System Architect only automatically defaults to the stylesheet in the encyclopedia files table if it is called autoexec.sty. Any other style files with different names in that directory are ignored unless the user explicitly opens them by selecting Format > Stylesheet > Open or by changing the stylesheet in the configuration of the encyclopedia.

What this means is that if you have multiple users working in an encyclopedia on a network, and the encyclopedia they are working in does not have an autoexec.sty file in it, each user could be using a different Stylesheet specified by their local copy of System Architect. So Charlie could be drawing green classes, while Sally could be drawing blue classes. Please remember that for properties such as color, size, and font, the Stylesheet applies to new symbols drawn -- existing symbols in the encyclopedia will remain as they are unless a user changes them (either manually or by applying their Stylesheet to them). So if Charlie draws green classes, Sally will see them as green, and not blue.

There are exceptions to this -- color, size, and font, etc are considered static properties of a symbol. However, there are other properties, such as display mode, that are considered dynamic properties. So for example, you may set the display mode to only show attributes but not methods on classes in a Class diagram (right‑click a symbol and choose Display Mode). Dynamic properties such as display mode apply to all symbols on a diagram -- even ones already drawn. So if Charlie chooses to hide all attributes on a Class diagram in his Stylesheet, and Sally chooses to show them in her Stylesheet, the two will be looking at a diagram that looks distinctly different, even though they are in the same encyclopedia.

If you have multiple users on a network, do one of these things to maintain consistency: