Cross-level realisation links in diagrams

Capella
1

Hi,

considering Arcadia being based on the concept of views (“engineering levels”) and cross-references between them, it is actually rather surprising why there is no graphical representation for these “realised by” and “realisation of” links in the diagrams. E.g. in a lower level xAB diagram, one could have specifically styled boxes representing the upper layer component or function (“realisation of” from the pov of lower level) around the corresponding lower level component or functions which realise them. And vice versa in the upper level xAB (“realised by”). This dramatically increases the perception of the modelling being a multi-level process and thus decreases the risk of inconstistencies, incompletness etc. As a kind of workaround, notes could be used instead having the same names as the referenced element in the other level, but for obvious reasons this does not really suffice. So why are these links hidden from diagrams and visible just in the properties dialog or in the semantic browser tab?

2

Hi,

For this case, you might want to take a look at this add-on: GitHub - labs4capella/cross-level-analysis
I don’t know exactly what it can do, but I think Naval Group has developed it exactly for this. They made this talk at the Capella Days where they talk about it: Towards digital-native engineering | NavalGroup | CapellaDays2022 - YouTube

Martin
ObeoSoft Canada

3

Hi,

The Title Blocks allows to display any kind of relationship towards any elements.

You can also use them for instance on a blank diagram to create some sort of dashboard displaying metrics, unexpected elements and co, based on semantic browser queries or AQL expressions.

4

Thanks for the suggestions. The add-on seems to be discontinued and the title blocks are not suited well for this purpose as they would visually clutter the diagram. A better option would be e.g. to introduce an additional “realisation” layer that would show boxes around the elements realised by or realising elements from a different level. These boxes would be labelled by the names of those elements defined in the other level.

5

Do not forget that there exist a lot of matrices to show realization links.
And you can edit them.

This is a concise and precise way to manage realization links.

image
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6

Indeed, this is an efficient and simple way for mass editing of realisations. However, not for visualisation. Capella is first and foremost diagram based, so there is no way around to show the cross-level-references in diagrams, I guess. One of the ideas how to achieve that is sketched above in one of my postings. Obeo should invest some energy into (thinking about) this. Hopefully, there is no NIH syndrome that will cause it to be ignored :slight_smile:

7

Agreed.

Several years ago, I saw the type of diagrams you wish inside Thales, but they did not industrialize nor open-source their internal add-on.