Hi everyone,
I am working on a Capella 7.0.1 project modeling the introduction of an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) system in a hospital environment. I have already created a large number of diagrams across the Operational Analysis (OA) and System Analysis (SA) layers, including multiple OABs, OAIBs, OESs and SFDBs.
In several of these diagrams I have activities with the same name – for example “Transport zu den Übergabepunkten” (Transport to the handover points) – which appear in multiple OABs representing different transport scenarios (goods transport, food transport, pharmacy transport, waste transport). These activities were created independently in each diagram and are therefore separate elements in the model, meaning I cannot validate them as a single reusable element across diagrams.
I would now like to use the REC/RPL mechanism to properly handle this reuse. However, I am concerned about the effort involved: ideally I would like to convert my existing activities into a REC and then reference them as RPLs in the existing diagrams – without having to recreate all the diagrams from scratch or manually update all existing connections.
My questions are:
- Is there a way in Capella 7.0.1 to convert an existing Operational Activity into a REC without losing its existing connections and diagram appearances?
- Is it possible to then reference the existing duplicate activities in other diagrams as RPLs of that REC – rather than creating new RPL instances and updating all diagrams manually?
- If a full REC/RPL conversion is not feasible at this stage, what would be the recommended approach to establish consistency across diagrams with shared activities?
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Hello,
First, just a side comment: you may have created multiple activities with the same name as part of your process of discovering the need/discussing with your stakeholders (interviews…). It may then be a normal architectural step to regroup these “duplicate activities” in one single activity. (Or not, just saying that using REC/RPL may not be always the right modeling choice depending on your case, and detecting duplicate functions/grouping them is an expected task when doing architecture work on complex systems).
Now for your questions:
1 - I am not sure if I understand your question, but, in Capella, a REC is technically in fact made of “links” that points to the model elements you selected when creating the REC. So creating a REC won’t have any impact on your its connections and diagram appearances
2 - I don’t think this is possible as is. Maybe writing a Python4Capella script that would do that is an option. But I don’t think this is going to be an easy script to write.
3 - What do you mean by “establish consistency across diagrams with shared activities” ? What is your goal here? Back to my first comment, I think really the first question is “is the Transport to the handover points” is actually one single activity that is carried out by your system independently of what it transports? If yes, then having multiple duplicate activities in your model is probably not the right way to model it and using REC/RPLs feels like a workaround. If No, then REC/RPL makes sense because your going to put in your REC the commonalities and each RPLs is going to have its variations. But there, I am not sure what you mean by consistency across diagrams, as diagrams are just views. We have “"Copy/paste” capabilities across diagrams if this is what you are looking for.
I hope this helps.
Stephane
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Okay, thank you for the detailed response!