Hide element within another element

Question

When making diagrams it can be useful to create a high-level view with little detail to get a first grasp. Then when the basics have been described it would be useful to explain it with more details in another section, with a more detailed diagram to aid the explanation. For the purpose, I thought I can make a highly detailed diagram and just apply the "hide $tag" constructs to hide what's within the high-level blocks. However, it seems that this hides more than intended:

@startuml
rectangle "==Outer 1" as o1 $Level1 {
rectangle "==Outer 2" as o2 $Level2 {
rectangle "==Inner" as inner $Level3
}
}
rectangle "a" as a
rectangle "b" as b
a -> b

' This also hides $Level2!
hide $Level3
@enduml

Using this in my daily work and it would greatly easen my work, so I'm willing to chip in some EUR for this fix. Please let me know the rate and where to direct my thanks. :)

Comments

Hello N.,

See pseudo-similar issue/defect here:

• https://forum.plantuml.net/14092/broken-diagram-with-nested-rectangles-and-remove-%40unlinked

Then, a workaround is to add dummy void element, as:

@startuml
rectangle "==Outer 1" as o1 $Level1 {
rectangle "==Outer 2" as o2 $Level2 {
[void]
remove void
rectangle "==Inner" as inner $Level3
}
}
rectangle "a" as a
rectangle "b" as b
a -> b

' This also hides $Level2!
hide $Level3
@enduml

@PlantUMLteam, see also those versions with defects:

A similar issue with `remove`... :

@startuml
rectangle "==Outer 1" as o1 $Level1 {
rectangle "==Outer 2" as o2 $Level2 {
rectangle "==Inner" as inner $Level3
}
}
rectangle "a" as a
rectangle "b" as b
a -> b

' This hides all!!
remove $Level3
@enduml

And also:

@startuml
rectangle "==Outer 1" as o1 $Level1 {
rectangle "==Outer 2" as o2 $Level2 {
rectangle "==Inner" as inner $Level3 {
}
}
}
rectangle "a" as a
rectangle "b" as b
a -> b

' This hides nothing?
hide $Level3
@enduml

If that can help,
Regards,
Th.

---

Thanks! Your suggestions got me moving.

The workaround that I employ now is to add curly brackets on the inner component as well (I was using components all along but used rectangles when reporting), and using hidden stereotypes. Doing that, I get the expected behavior.

Example:

@startuml
component A <<$L1>> {
    component B <<$L2>> {
        component C <<$L3>> $L3 {
        }
    }
}

hide <<$L3>>
hide stereotype

@enduml