Concept diagram

[Szymon]

Dear all,

Im very new user of Enterprise Architect.
Quite often i draw such diagram:

Can you advise how can i draw it in EA? What elements and what arrows to use?

Thank you,
Best Regards,
Szymon

[Richard Freggi]

EA is optimized for UML.  It does non-UML things pretty well but it's not optimal for it.  Visio and Powerpoint are better alternatives for non-UML diagrams.

[qwerty]

Stay with Visio or Powerpoint.

q.

[Sunshine]

Looks like a made-up notation for system design for hardware and not following any standard notation that I don't recognise. Whilst you can use the whiteboard shapes for informal diagrams in Sparx EA it would not really be a good use of Sparx EA. If the next step is to do electronic circuit design then you'd be better off with a CAD system that supports electronic symbols ISO 60617. You can then do simulations to check the design and auto layout circuit boards and generate parts lists etc. If you want to use a tool other than visio/powerpoint then choose a formal notation to use and see what tools support it.

[Takeshi K]

Hello Szymon,

Similar comment to Sunshine, what is the notation? It seems like OPD, but different in some points. I have offered some Profiles (shapes and connection rules for a notation) like FTA and GSN, and I am interested in the notation.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Hello Szymon,
The unspoken question that everybody should have asked is:
Are you drawing a diagram or trying to create a model? If you just want to draw a diagram, then a modelling tool is probably not the right tool to do that; notwithstanding that, any GOOD modelling tool should have a GOOD diagramming tool within it.

If you ARE trying to draw a model, then as others have suggested or asked, are you conforming to a known standard or are you "rolling your own"?  If the latter, then your modelling tool should try to assist you with direct or indirect support.  In Sparx EA, this is normally done via an MDG file.

So if you answer the most basic question, we can probably better help you with the others.

HTH,
Paolo

[Szymon]

Dear all,

Same topic arose again on my side.
The type of diagram which im asking for is called: Object process methodology (OPM)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Process_Methodology#:~:text=Object%2DProcess%20Methodology%20(OPM),its%20structure%20and%20its%20behavior.

Does EA provide support for OPM diagrams?

Such diagram i often use at early stage of an initiative. Some will become a real project and in such case i would like to keep those diagram as part of model. In another case it is just drawing diagram for me.

Any advises?

Thank you in advance,
Best Regards,
Szymon

[Geert Bellekens]

I don't think there's an MDG yet to support these types of diagram, but it looks simple enough to make it yourself.

Shouldn't take more than a couple of days I guess.

Geert

[Sunshine]

A full list of features can be found here to see what notations are supported. As Geert suggests out of the box it doesn't look like OPM is supported.
https://sparxsystems.com/products/ea/compare-editions.html
You can create your own mdg (Model Driven Generation) technology to support it. Note that it takes quite a bit of effort to learn how to do it and can be difficult. For more details here is the user guide.
https://sparxsystems.com/resources/user-guides/16.1/modeling/mdg-technologies.pdf
Alternatively look for another tool that supports OPM.