Useful Hacks in Using Astah

I've been using Astah (download here) more recently for the MindMap feature and felt to share this wonderful "hack" with you.

I jotted some points in NotePad and wish to quickly transfer them into Astah as a MindMap.

The easiest way to retain the hierarchy is to use [TAB].

Therefore I could easily transform this

Hierarchical List of Points

Into

Same List of Points in MindMap

Here is how it's done:

Like magic, the MindMap is created and the hierarchy is retained.

You wish to draw professional-looking diagrams using AWS/ Azure icons. Is that possible & easy to do in Astah?

AWS Deployment

Believe it or not, the above is drawn in Astah!

Here is how it's done:

Go to Tools -> Project Settings -> Set Icon for Stereotype (See Custom Icons for Stereotypes Diagram)
Choose Add File and multi-select whatever icons you wish to use
The stereotype name would be the name of the image (by default) and each entry is of Classifier kind

Custom Icons for Stereotypes

To actually use what has been created, you now need to do the following:

Depending on what you intend to create, you can create each UML element (icon) to be a Component or a Node - I prefer to use Node most of the time for flexibility. (See Created Nodes diagram)
Add a Stereotype to each Node (based on the new ones created earlier)
Create a UML Deployment Diagram and add the Nodes into the diagram
Do note that some are Nodes within Nodes. E.g. EBS within Web (See Node within Node diagram)
Select all Nodes and right-click to apply to all Nodes
Select Icon Notation -> Customized Icon
The Nodes now have got a new look!
Link them as required

Created Nodes

Node within Node

SOFTware is HARD