Populating your architecture manually

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How to

The higher-level components and connections of your architecture will probably need to be populated manually. Typically this will be the more abstract components and connections.

To manually populate your architecture

1.Ensure you have an ABACUS file open, an explorer displayed, and an architecture added.

2.Add a component. To do this, Right-click on the area of the tree you want to populate, and select Add Sub-Component..., or click the New Component button on the View toolbar. Components can only be added under the Components branch of the tree. You want your tree diagram to be an accurate representation of your architecture. When you discovered your architecture, you will have learned exactly how it all fits together. You'll need this knowledge when you add your components and connections. If you're adding your first component, you'll add it directly to the Components branch. The rest of your components can be either at the same level in the tree, or they can be sub-components of the first.

3.Update the values of the properties of each component as you add it. To do this, click on the component, and edit the properties displayed in the Properties window (typically) to the right. Properties are generally things like requirements, processing capacity, etc. When ABACUS evaluates your architecture, it will calculate some new properties, and save them back to the architecture. The new properties are the data you're trying to analyse, such as utilisation, response time, bandwidth, etc.

4.Add your connections and update their properties as you go - just as you do for components (but under the Connections branch of the tree).

5.Attach connections and components. To do this, locate the connection, click on one of its ends or roles, and drag it onto a component. Alternatively, click on a component and drag it onto one of the connection's roles (i.e. either Source or Sink). Or you can right-click and drag a component onto another component and select Connect To. Or simply right-click a component and select Connect.... When you drag a connection role, you'll notice a shortcut symbol when you point at a component you can attach it to. This indicates that you're not making a copy, you're just attaching it. Make sure you attach it to the correct destination component. For example, if it's a connection's Source role, drag it do the source component (i.e. the component that is the source of the data flow).

Note

When using these Connect dialogs, invalid connections and components in regard to constraints will not be shown.

Tip

Re-ordering entities within your architecture (e.g. Components, Connections etc.) in the explorer is quite easy. Simply Click | Hold | Drag the relevant entity and place where desired in your architecture. The re-ordering functionality also allows you to place entities within different hierarchies of your architecture.

You may also want to

6.Add Standards (pre-configured sets of properties - presets) to your components, connections or types

7.Change the properties of a component, connection or type

8.Undo and Redo operations

9.Change the Type of a component or connection

10.Create a new Type or Type Group

11.Delete a component or connection

12.Create, duplicate or evolve an architecture

13.Import types and standards from a library

14.Import from another ABACUS file, XML, Excel or Visio

15.Copy and paste parts (or all) of your architecture

16.Find and Replace items in your architecture

17.Expand/Collapse some or all of the nodes in the tree

18.Merge items

19.Define and Validate Constraints to restrict the structure of your architecture

20.Evolve your architecture to create several architectural solutions to compare and baseline

21.Change a objects parent

Grouping your content

ABACUS Projects can support multi-level grouping for particular items in your project which include:

•Standards

•Component/Connection Types

•Viewpoints

•Templates

•Catalogues

•Matrices

•Diagrams

•3D Views

•Charts

To add groups to your Project:

1.Open the menu via Right-Click on the relevant node in the explorer tree.

2.Click Create Group.

Note

When you adjust permissions on groups, you can propagate the permissions to all groups and items within the group being adjusted. See Working with Permissions for more information.