Understand the art of the possible. My mission is to make executable Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) easy with the Object Management Group's Systems Modeling Language™ (SysML®) and UML® to make simple modeling easy to deploy to the masses. This site provides practical experience of tuning IBM® Rational® Rhapsody® - a precision engineering UML/SysML tool. Rhapsody tips and ideas will be posted with links to videos. You can follow by email (if google app is allowed).
Conventional Rhapsody Gateway usage would be to export a Rhapsody model as a surrogate module in DOORS with links to a formal module that contains the requirements. However, did you know that the Export Document to DOORS functionality can be used to add Rhapsody diagrams to an existing DOORS module? This can be useful for supplementing textual requirements with diagrammatic information that makes them easier to understand and conveys additional meaning. It's straight forward. However, the settings need to be done carefully to make it work as expected. This short video illustrates.
Key things to remember:
Set the Capture diagrams variable for the model (in the Project Configuration), re-analyze and make sure the diagrams are shown.
In the Export Document to DOORS dialog: - Filter out all the element types that are not diagrams (and parts of the model you don't want). - Check the box for Diagram images. - Check the box for Keep children of filtered elements. - Check the box for Do not maintain elements location. - Specify the DOORS login details (e.g. using a profile for the server)
I've not posted in a while (I have a good excuse, I committed to do some volunteering work!).
I keep getting asked about Flow-ports and how to get them to work in Rhapsody, hence I thought I'd kick things off again by providing a video on this. My gut-feeling, SysML proxy-ports still lack the simplicity you can achieve with flow-ports (which, given they are the base of the Simulink integrations, are unlikely to go away in Rhapsody anytime soon).
Despite the introduction of proxy ports in SysML 1.3, flow-ports remain very useful when simulating systems. In this video I demonstrate how to use flow-ports in IBM Rational Rhapsody to transfer data values from Parts defined by different Blocks, and get the receiving Block to react to changes to the value in the transmitting Block. One of the good things about flow-ports is that they are multi-cast, e.g. it's possible to draw connectors to multiple parts. This, in combination with the fine granularity makes them very useful for simulating automotive systems.
While I admire the intent behind proxy-ports, I think there are practical reasons therefore why flow-ports persist as useful. They are also the basis of Simulink integration in Rhapsody, another reason why they are not going away quickly. The trick to using flow-ports for simulation in Rhapsody is to understand that it uses naming conventions. This video illustrations the use of a change event (e.g. chSpeed) and a setter (e.g. setVehSpeed), together with name equivalence between the flow-port and the value property/attribute to get it working for simulation.
Wed, Jul 19, 2017 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM BST
Show in My Time Zone
Presenter: Fraser Chadburn, Trainer/consultant in Rational Rhapsody (currently working in automotive)
Fraser will demonstrate creating an executable “concept of operations” OMG SysML model from scratch with requirements traced in DOORS. He will use an open-source alternative to the Harmony-SE toolkit and explain how it has evolved slightly differently in order to fit with the experiences he's seen in the automotive market. Advanced and exploratory techniques will be touched on such as using Object-Orientated inheritance of black-box behaviours, coping with iterative and evolving use case models, as well as use of tool automation to reduce training needs during deployment. Aligning SysML/UML usage to the graphical notations familiar to automotive control engineers expectations, using state-based behaviours with continuous conditions, flowing data between controllers, and automatically building test plans/cases from executing the system specification will be touched on based on aspirations to use standards-based SysML modelling in automotive feature development.
Being able to navigate between diagrams, including drilling back and forth through hierarchies of diagrams is increasingly important for systems engineers and SysML in general (and is also important in UML 2.x which introduced structured classes). In this video I show a new feature added to Rhapsody 8.2.1 (June 2017) called "Quick Navigation" shortcuts.
As illustrated in this short video, this new feature is enabled by setting the General::Graphics::EnableQuickNavigation property. The categories of displayed types can then be tailored for individual diagram or element types using QuickNavigationCategories properties for different meta-classes/diagrams. Further refinement is also possible using the Compartment tab of individual graphical elements, resulting in quite a cool new usability feature that is easily enabled (with a certain amount of power behind it for advanced users to play with). A very welcome addition to Rhapsody for both UML and SysML users ...
Another Rhapsody SysML/MBSE tips and tricks video!
Understanding the difference between Blocks and Parts (and thus the difference between BDDs and IBDs) is a massively important topic for a SysML practitioner and something that very few Rhapsody users with no training will guess their way into (I'm forever finding users who try to draw connectors between Blocks, give up, and choose to use Flows instead!).
The whole Block, Part, Port/Connector capability of SysML (and to some extent UML) is really powerful though. This video tries to shed some light on the typical question: Why can't I draw a connector between ports on two Blocks? The video is using IBM Rational Rhapsody 8.2.1 (released June 2017)
p.s. The topic of which ports to use is a whole different ballgame ;-)
Just so you know, v8.2.1 of IBM Rational Rhapsody was released on June 12th. The IBM page for release notes etc is here and includes a Whats New overview. There's quite few usability things that look good, e.g., Diagram: back and forward navigation button improvements, Diagrams: hover Drawing toolbar and Diagrams: new layouts for Populate Diagram and Rearrange. Some videos will follow. Rhapsody has significant releases roughly twice a year, hence there are 6 months of development time in 8.2.1 compared with 8.2. (my understanding is that development team has also invested more effort - with a particular focus on usability).
I've updated my download and setup Rhapsody Designer for MBSE setup instructions to align, see below. Note fully tested all the training against it but initial tests didn't indicate any show stoppers so I will start update soon (so that all my Rhapsody training is on the latest!).
As an update the SysMLHelper has recently had a couple of updates (latest is v2.1.g). Aim is to finish testing in next 2 weeks, hence it's possible I'll do a couple more updates. These mainly relate to speeding up workflow on the "straight to white-box" modelling workflow. I'm posting details to http://www.executablembse.com/ and preparing a tutorial for this.
