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Members 3. The top two rows include the menu and toolbar controls. These are only present when the diagram is open in edit mode. If you are just viewing a diagram, these elements won't appear on screen including the explicit save button. Next on the left hand side you will find a set of drawing palettes. These supply the elements that can be added to the drawing canvas the main part of the editor and where the diagram resides.

Each of these symbols, when added to the diagram, will be associated with an architecture element core model element each of which have an associated set of attributes dependent on the element type.

The attributes for a model element appear within the Attribute tab of the format panel typically visible to the right of the diagram canvas. Since the selected item represents an architectural element, there is an Attributes tab on the format panel that displays the attributes of the associated architectural element.

In addition to the diagram specific palette, there will always be an Annotation palette. This palette contains a set of common shapes. Adding a symbol from the annotation palette onto the diagram just adds that shape to the diagram. This shape is NOT associated with any architectural element. Thus annotations are just used to add style to the diagram.

Below is the same System Context diagram, with the pink cloud shape selected. Note that the format panel only shows the Style, Text and Arrange tabs; the Attributes tab is missing. Also available are a set of palettes that represent the reusable architecture elements available in the architecture that are appropriate for this artifact type.

Here you can easily drag an element that has been defined elsewhere in the architecture onto the diagram for reuse.

As of release 2. A few diagram types have additional palettes available beyond the diagram specific palette and the annotation palette. Those will be detailed in sections specific to those diagram types. In general you add something from a palette onto the drawing canvas via a drag operation.

Select a symbol and drag from the palette to where you want to place it on the canvas. If you just click on a symbol, the symbol will get added at a random location on the canvas. When connecting the end of a connector to a symbol you will want to see a "green" connection dot or green bounding box outline appear before releasing the mouse to make the connection. Otherwise, you will have just moved the line's endpoint without accomplishing making a connection. The start state for the above graphic is a connector highlighted in red along with error message whose one endpoint is not connected.

The arrow head end has been grabbed using the mouse and the mouse moves over the edge of the target system. When positioned properly, you see the anchor points the tiny blue 'x's , and the "hot green dot" shows a selected anchor is active.

Releasing the mouse will make the connection as per earlier version of the diagram and the error will be removed. In the case of the System Context diagram and many more of the diagram types , there is exactly one type of connector supported on the diagram.

In these cases it is not necessary to explicitly drag the connector from the palette onto the canvas and then connect each end. Instead, with nothing selected on the diagram, hover the mouse over the bounding box for a symbol you which to have as the starting point for a connector. Once you get the green outline or green circle, click the mouse and then move over the boundary of the destination symbol.

Once you get the destination symbol outline or circle to turn green, release the mouse. This will add the connector while connecting it at the same time. The MxGraph framework provides a rich set of formatting tools to help you make the diagram look however you would like. Many of these are self explanatory and are available directly in the 3 separate tabs of the format panel : Style, Text, and Arrange.

The Style panel let's you apply style to whatever element is selected. So if it is a line, the choice of line style dash, solid , endpoint style arrow type , thickness, color, etc. You can also adjust whether the line is straight, curved, orthogonal jogs, etc. Also if two lines are selected which cross , you can set the style for the line crossing.

If the symbol is a shape then things like fill and outline color, etc are available to be changed. The style panel also includes an Edit Style button which provides access to the basic properties of the shape for instance the base shape type, whether it is a container, whether the shape is represented by an image icon - thus exposing an "edit image" control, etc.

Knowledge of the "Edit Style" and the corresponding style commands are most important to be able to replace the style of one symbol with the basic style of some other symbol in the system.

Tip: For instance, you might want to have your Target System represented by an image in the System Context diagram. This approach of identifying and applying a style from a symbol from any diagram to a different symbol in the same or different diagram type can universally be applied. The Text panel let's you modify the text properties for the selected item. This includes things like positional alignment vertical and horizontal , font family and size, bold, italics, and underline, word wrap, font color and background color.

The Arrange panel allows you to position the layering of stacked items to front, to back , the size of symbols and the position relative to the canvas, and flip and rotate symbols. Of perhaps most value is being able to select multiple symbols and align and space them.

You can define any symbol as being a container and optionally collapsible, for example Subsystem, Location, OMLocation. Then moving the parent container will move it along with all its contained children as a group. In this environment all of your edit operations are being handled within the Browser via the MxGraph javascript library. As you make changes, MxGraph is managing a "stack" of changes you make allowing you to "undo".

At the same time, nothing is being persisted to the back-end until a "Save" is performed. Thus, if you were to make several changes and then close your Browser your work will be lost. The Save button, in the upper right corner of the MxGraph editor, will write-back the current state of the diagram and underlying architecture model to the back-end for saving. When a diagram is saved, the undo "stack" is cleared.

Thus, undo is only available between "saves". Each diagram type has a set of validation rules associated with it to help maintain a valid architecture data model. For example, a System Context diagram, must have 1 and exactly 1 Target System present on the diagram. In addition, all connectors must have 1 endpoint connected to the Target System and the other endpoint connected to an Actor.

In other words, connectors are not allowed to connect two Actors together. Also while editing this diagram, there are some architecture-wide validation that is also being enforced, e. In the case of the System Context diagram, all of this validation can and is performed by the front-end logic, i. In other diagram types, there are some validation rules that can only be fully assessed by the back-end during a "save" operation.

The user experience of these types of validation checks, is that you won't see the validation error message until the save happens. This is particularly odd for the user when the application "auto-saves". In this case you might not be actively doing anything in the editor, auto-save occurs, and the back-end detects a validation error and you likely get a "save failed" along with the validation error.

Tip : When starting to work on a new diagram type, you are advised to explicitly save after any noteworthy change to the diagram so that you can better understand any back-end validation errors that may get triggered.

In any diagram in IBM Architect Assistant, Community Edition, with no symbol selected, the Attributes panel will present the attributes of the diagram itself. This is where you will see the diagram name, a diagram description which is where you can document the intent of the diagram , and potentially one or more diagram level view controls.

The fourth artifact type from a user experience basis is a diagram overlay, Usage Scenario. The usage scenario provides a way to overlay a "story" or "flow" onto an existing Architecture Overview diagram. What is uniquely authored in a Usage Scenario instance, is this story. When a new instances is created, you must first specify the AOD diagram it is based upon selected from a list along with the scenario name.

In the editor for a usage scenario, there are no drawing palettes. Instead you are provided with a way to select a "connector" from the underlying AOD diagram and then associate it with one or more steps. A step has two attributes, name and description. Further the name must be a single token and either be all numeric or all alphabetic.

The idea is the steps have names: 1, 2, 3, The description is used to tell the "story segment" associated with the step. When a "connector" is selected, all currently defined steps for the usage scenario are presented along with a checkbox to select or deselect each one.

The usage scenario editor will place "step circles" on the selected connector for each associated step. When given the option to select the associated steps, you are also presented with the ability to create a new step. In addition to adding and associating steps to connectors, you can also select any other non-connector symbols and "disable" them.

The editor then will "gray-out" these disabled symbols. As briefly noted earlier, the Misc Diagrams have a different purpose. Misc Diagrams are based on the same MxGraph framework as the other diagram types but are delivered without coupling to a specific architecture [diagram type] meta-model.

Here all drawing elements are annontations no attached meta-data. You do have a richer set of drawing palettes to support creation of org charts, business process flows, C4 diagrams, etc.

Thus you can use the tool to create diagrams not supported as first class citizens by the underlying architecture meta-model. As will be described shortly, you can also start with this diagram style as a sketch and later, if appropriate, convert the diagram into a supported architecture diagram.

The other feature supported in Misc Diagrams is importing an existing Draw. Closely related to the introduction of the Misc Diagram is the ability to apply architecture meta-model attributes to an object that doesn't currently exhibit any such attributes.

The first part of this is to be able to create an architecture diagram from an existing Misc Diagram. Each artifact type that is represented by a diagram now has the option on the "Add diagram" dialog, to Render from miscellaneous diagram. Clicking on this link will provide you with the list of current Misc Diagrams available in the architecture.

Completing the "render" operation will add just the meta-data for the diagram itself appropriate for the type of diagram being added. This is generally only valuable if you can also then convert the associated drawing elements annotations into architectural elements, thus adding or associating the corresponding element type meta-data.

Note you will only be presented with the element types supported by the drawing element kind: line or shape AND the corresponding diagram type. Via repeated application of element conversion, you can take any sketch or imported diagram and manually convert these to full-fledged architecture diagrams while retaining the original look and feel.

Within an architecture there are two different navigation mechanisms. When you are not within an artifact instance, the TOC provides the way to select an artifact type to view or edit. In or out of an artifact instance, there is a "breadcrumb" that supports navigation to all levels of the tool.

If a particular level of a breadcrumb represents multiple options at that level, there is a "down arrow" that will present you with the available elements at that level to select and navigate to. With any documentation tool you want to be able to quickly reuse elements. This is logically a copy and paste operation. In some of our how-to videos, we describe both fine-grained and coarse-grained reuse support within IBM Architect Assistant, Community Edition.

The copy operation at an architecture level either via the ' Take an architecture and make a new copy that can be customized independent of the source. These are various degrees of fine-grained reuse. Within each artifact type there is the ability to copy an existing artifact instance within an architecture, name it as a unique instance and then customize that new artifact instance. The complexity of the copy depends on the underlying complexity of the artifact instance itself.

What about fine-grained copying between architectures? Today there are two approaches based on the type of artifact. You can export a set of artifact instances from one architect to an Excel Spreadsheet and then import those artifact instances possible filtered and edited while in spreadsheet form into another architecture. For diagrams, you likely will only want to copy part of a source artifact instance diagram.

Within that menu there is the choice: Open from Offline. This allows you to select from architectures to copy from. The user experience is then to select the architecture you want to copy from. Once a source architecture is selected you will be presented with the list of architecture artifact instances that match the artifact type of your target. Only copying between the same artifact type instances is supported.

You then will select the artifact instance and that instance is opened read-only as an additional tab within the diagram MxGraph editor. You can then select a portion or all of the content of the source diagram and select copy, then click on the tab of your target diagram and select paste. So how does the tool handle a paste operation that implies the addition of "new" elements with conflicting names? When the user triggers the paste action, a list of all the elements that result in a name conflict are presented to the end-user to determine how the conflict is to be resolved.

The user is given 3 choices which can be summarized: 1 keep both, 2 keep existing, or 3 replace target. Keep both Make new - In this case the "source" element is renamed using a "Copy of" prefix, and added as a new element in the target architecture. Keep existing - In this case the source element is identified to be equivalent to the target element of the same name.

The pre-existing target element will retain its current attributes. Replace update - Like the previous option, the source and target elements are deemed to be equivalent however the desire is for the resulting element to retain the attributes of the source version.

Note, the conflict element list may include "invisible" elements that are "reference" attributes of one or more of the visible elements being pasted! As you can see, from the above image, you can select to apply the same conflict resolution approach to all conflicting elements or select individually.

Note if you decide to create a copy keep both and later want to merge, you can always point to an existing element via the "Select from existing" option on the attributes panel see Shared Elements discussion earlier!

In a mechanism very similar to the Resource menu, you can copy text-based artifact instances, e. To support users that are used to quickly duplicating a symbol on a diagram to create a new element, a local copy-paste or "duplicate" behaves this way, namely a new architecture element of the same type is created with a new name "copy of ".

The copy will include the same direct attribute values and any "child" dependent relationship elements will also be cloned "copy by value" as the source element to keep duplicate the same structure. There is a lot of value of having everything associated with a Solution Architecture captured within a single asset that can easily be shared with collaborators. However there are many situations in which an architect would like to deliver a snapshot of the architecture in a different format, not requiring either the online or offline tool.