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Copying Existing Requirements

The Copy relationship is a relationship between two Requirements; it is used to show that one Requirement is a copy of another. The relationship is a type of Dependency and is represented by a dashed line with the keyword <<copy>>, with an open arrow head pointing from the Copied (Client) to the Base Requirement (Supplier). Given that Requirements elicitation, and management are expensive and time consuming activities, and that many projects often have an overlap of interests, it is useful to re-use Requirements; the Copy relationship provides a mechanism to do this. The base Requirement is typically stored in another project's namespace but it is considered good practice to move the common (base) Requirements to a namespace that sits above the level of individual projects.

The Copy relationship is available from the Relationships page of the SysML Requirements Toolbox.

This diagram depicts a power utilization Requirement that has been copied for re-use in a number of projects.

When the Copy relationship is used the new Requirements are assigned a new id, but the text of the new Requirement will be a read-only copy of the base Requirement.