Messages

76

General Board / Re: Constraints appear as parts instead of constraints

« on: December 19, 2023, 12:27:43 am »

Acording to the SysML spec (section 10.1) "Constraint blocks provide a mechanism for integrating engineering analysis such as performance and reliability models with other SysML models". The example given (10.2.1) suggests a constraint based on a mathematical operation, where the input parameters to that operation will be taken from elsewhere in the model. Another common example is something like Newton's laws. The idea is that you are defining a constraint to be reused/obeyed in various places throughout the model.
Constraints within the 'Properties' of an Element are typically conditions around the behaviours and existance of an instantiation of that Element. E.g. a certain precondition is expected/required prior to execution of an Activity.

There are better summaries of the differences online, as ever Google is your friend.

But coming back to your question. I'm not sure that it would logically make sense for a Block (a classifier) to have Parts that are defined as ConstraintBlocks. It may depend on what your constraints are trying to achieve, and what your Block is actually defining, but Part Association doesn't feel right to me. Although EA will let you do it

77

General Board / Re: SysML 2 support

« on: December 18, 2023, 10:08:26 pm »

Sorry to resurrect an old topic but I thought it more appropriate than raising a new thread on the same subject.

To be clear - does the introduction of SysML v2 make v1 obsolete? I can't imagine this is really the case, but I can't find any clear commentary on this anywhere online. Or maybe it depends on ones' definition of 'obsolete'...?

78

General Board / Re: Constraints appear as parts instead of constraints

« on: December 18, 2023, 07:55:15 pm »

Constraints are normally (I think) added to Elements using that Element's 'Properties' window ("Constraints" tab). These are the ones that appear in the Element's 'Constraints' compartment on the BDD.
ConstraintBlocks (or any other Element) will by design be added as Parts when using a Part Association.
If you are married to the idea of using ConstraintBlocks then you could consider using an Allocate to link them to your main Block. I guess maybe it depends on the content of your ConstraintBlock (edit: sorry should elaborate - this is because Constraints and ConstraintBlocks are used for different purposes!).

79

General Board / Re: ItemFlows & ObjectFlows on IBDs and swimlaned ADs

« on: November 30, 2023, 10:26:15 pm »

Takeshi, thankyou so much for this reply. From the video it looks like your add-in would do EXACTLY what we are looking for. A shame that it's not part of the built-in EA features. Especially because, after looking again at the SysML spec, formal Allocation of ObjectFlow to ItemFlow seems to be SysML-compliant (cf Figure 15-6 in the SysML v1.6 spec).
I tried to attach my diagrams to show you my results but our network won't let me upload the images to my post. I have managed to do this Allocation of ObjectFlow to ItemFlow, but it seems quite a weak link in EA and your add-in is a more elegant result within the tool.
Thankyou again for your guidance, much appreciated.

80

General Board / ItemFlows & ObjectFlows on IBDs and swimlaned ADs

« on: November 29, 2023, 09:42:54 pm »

I probably missed something obvious here, but search hasn't turned out a suitable answer.

Our team have defined ItemFlows on BDDs, connecting Blocks using Ports.
We also have Activity Diagrams that are swimlaned, with the lanes are classified using the same Blocks as on the IBDs. There are ObjectFlows connecting Actions in the different swimlanes (implying that an Object has been passed from one classified Object to another).
So some of our ItemFlows between the Ports on the BDD are essentially the same as the ObjectFlows between classified swimlanes on the AD.

I appreciate that behavioural models are often independent of the structure, but once we start applying classifiers to swimlanes it starts to make sense to draw this equivalence.

Is there a way to make EA understand that the IBD ItemFlows and AD ObjectFlows are equivalent?
Any help/discussion greatly appreciated!

81

General Board / Re: Configuration Control of Elements in distributed Packages

« on: November 28, 2023, 09:18:05 pm »

Thanks, I've done a bit of reading around and it looks like a really useful feature in some cases - thankyou for the extra information you provided.
One way we might use this would be to freeze a v1.0 baseline and clone it to v1.1. Then our design team can continue working on v1.1 while other teams refer to v1.0 as a stable baseline for their own purposes (it's more complicated than that in reality but no point me boring you with detail).

thanks

82

General Board / Re: Configuration Control of Elements in distributed Packages

« on: November 27, 2023, 09:34:51 pm »

Hi Paolo, thanks for the reply, I wasn't aware of this feature. Looks great for controlling design branches. It's maybe not precisely what I had in mind as the related Elements I want to include in the 'baseline' are distributed widely throughout the model, so the 'Versions' would be cloned at a very high Package level (so would still increase model data size significantly by capturing unrelated Elements). Plus I need to look into how it handles Relationships (I'd want Elements not captured within the version to have links to the Elements in the 'new' version', not the 'as-is' version - need to look into that!).
But I will certainly have a look and suggest it as an option. It would address some of our needs, if not all.
Thanks!

83

General Board / Configuration Control of Elements in distributed Packages

« on: November 24, 2023, 11:33:25 pm »

I've done a quick forum search but apologies if this has been answered previously.

Context: EA15.2

I'd like to be able to record a 'baseline' of a group of related Elements as a 'snapshot' of their status in time (simply the 'Name', 'Type', 'Status' and 'Version' properties of each Element would do).
The Elements I want to include are in Packages distrbuted through the model, living alongside various other Elements that I don't want to include in my baseline. So simply doing Package baselines would mean that I am capturing information I don't want (i.e. the status of unrelated Elements).

The overall idea is to be able to say, for example, "v1.0 of UseCase1 was Allocated to v2.3 of ElementXX, and Refines v1.1 of RequirementYY..." (...not literally as a sentence, but in some kind of Configuration Index Document )
It will then let us manage change later on, so if a lower-level Element is changed (version incremented) and it belongs to one or more baselines, we can assess the impact on those baselines.

Please can someone suggest the best way to tackle this?
I'm not too bothered about the method or the output format. I'm open to creating Custom Documents, using EAdocX, scripting, SQL...
If the question is too vague or confusing, please let me know.

84

General Board / Re: Show Elements in Compartments as well as on Diagram

« on: May 10, 2023, 12:59:39 am »

Thanks both for your suggestions. Yeah looks like I need to find some kind of compromise/workaround. Or possibly just reassess the need to show all of the detail on one single diagram.

85

General Board / Show Elements in Compartments as well as on Diagram

« on: May 03, 2023, 08:53:45 pm »

I have a Block on a diagram. In my project browser, the Block contains (nested underneath it) an Activity. There is no SysML relationship between the two.
On the diagram, the Activity is shown in the Block's 'owned behaviours' compartment. Good so far.
However, when I then put the Activity on the same diagram*, it no longer appears in the Block's 'owned behaviours' compartment. (* I'd like to do this as I'm drawing a model ontology diagram which explains millions on things all on one diagram, sorry if that makes you cringe)

I understand that this behaviour - hiding the Activity from the Compartment - is intentional ("If a compartment is not shown, it might be necessary to locate and remove from the diagram the corresponding related or child elements, save the diagram, and reload the diagram to refresh the display of compartments" - https://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/15.2/model_domains/block_element_compartments.html). But is there any way at all to have the Activity listed in the 'Owned Behaviours' compartment as well as appearing on my diagram? Maybe some radio button that I've missed in EA somewhere...?

Thanks!

86

General Board / Re: Simulating ObjectFlow on Activity Diagram

« on: March 15, 2023, 08:50:41 pm »

Well, maybe. I only once used the statemachine simulation and found it easier to go through it in my mind. I would guess that in case of the AD simulation ObjectFlow might not be handled the right way by EA. At least that would not surprise me. Maybe a Sparxian will tell me I'm wrong. Otherwise you are free to send a bug report. I would not put much hope in seeing any progress there in a near future.

q.

Yes, I guess that is entirely possible. I may have only joined this forum recently but I've been using EA for a few years and am familiar with people ex-posing corner-case limitations like this. It doesn't put me off, I think EA is a great tool for the price. And if I run into one of these 'limitations' it's not usually a big problem for me technically, it's just good to know so that I can stop working on the assumption that I've made a mistake myself really appreciate your responses, thanks.

Thanks for the reply. It's just a simple Activity Diagram - though nobody has checked it so I sort of assumed I could well have done something wrong.
I agree with your summary from the UML spec - I expected that ObjectFlow would pass control too (and could pass a 'null' value Object with that control token). I noticed that the ActionPins have a 'Control' Boolean property, but setting this to 'True' didn't allow EA to simulate the flow. Interestingly (to me) ObjectFlow connectors do NOT have a 'Control' property, which is perhaps how 'Control' should be specified for elements classified under ObjectNode, as we have alluded to in this discussion. Maybe that's the feature to request in order to add this functionality to EA.

87

General Board / Re: Simulating ObjectFlow on Activity Diagram

« on: March 14, 2023, 12:32:58 am »

Well, no. A token is passed along ObjectFlow like in ControlFlow, though it's a special one. It well controls the flow of events. That is, when you send something along an ObjectFlow the receiver will accept that and if it has not other incoming edges it will start working.

q.

Thanks for the reply! But I think I'm now back to where I started! What you describe was my original expectation for ObjectFlow - that I could use them to control events as well as passing the 'object'.
This is the bit I can't work out in EA though. I have an AD with 2 Actions connected using an ObjectFlow between ActionPins embedded on the Actions. When the simulation reaches these nodes, it simply stops. So I guess that maybe I need to set up some local objects/variables somehow so that they (and the control token) can be passed from one Action to the next via the ObjectFlow. Am I getting warm..?

Thanks again for your help!

88

General Board / Re: Simulating ObjectFlow on Activity Diagram

« on: March 13, 2023, 11:23:15 pm »

Thanks for your reply Paulo, much appreciated.
I've gone back to the UML spec and the EA guidance and I think I'd missed the subtlety that control is not passed along ObjectFlow transitions.
Seems to me then that the simplest approach would be to model my Activity using only ControlFlows (to get the sequence of events right in the simulation) and worry about ObjectFlows afterwards, in terms of trying to show when an Object is received or sent by a specific Action.

Thanks again for your answer, you're pointing me in the right direction!

89

General Board / Re: Simulating ObjectFlow on Activity Diagram

« on: March 13, 2023, 10:21:03 pm »

Hi again. is anybody able to advise on this? Please let me know if the question is unclear.

90

General Board / Simulating ObjectFlow on Activity Diagram

« on: March 07, 2023, 11:12:32 pm »

Hi all. I've searched this forum and others but can't find the answer to this question. I'm sure it's something simple that someone can explain to me!

I'm trying to run some simple Activity Diagrams in EA16.1.1625 using the 'Simulate' function.
When I hit 'Start', I can see the AD execute each Action in turn when they are linked by ControlFlows, but whenever it gets to an ObjectFlow the simulation simply ends. The 'Simulation' pane logs "Simulation Ended". This happens regardless of whether or not I use ActionPins.

Is it as simple as I need to actually define the Object that will pass over the ObjectFlow, and then it will be able to simulate the ObjectFlow? (It sounds like the obvious answer, but I thought I wouldn't need to do that because an ObjectFlow is semantically also a ControlFlow, so I hoped it might effectively pass a 'null' object and continue...).

Thanks for any answers