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Cradle from 3SL, the complete Model Based Systems Engineering Toolsuite, specialising in requirements management, requirements capture, model based systems engineering and for systems engineering software, support and consultancy, the logical choice: Cradle from 3SL.

January 2010 [Cradle 6.1]

CSV Export

Cradle can export to CSV the same types of information that it can import from CSV:

  • Requirements
  • Events
  • System notes
  • Data definitions
  • Specifications
  • Cross references

The items that are to be exported can be controlled in the same way as for other types of export:

  • Specified through the Export Information dialog
  • Specified by a query

When exporting information to a CSV file, you must specify a mapping between the fields in the CSV file and the attributes of the items to be exported.

To export information from Cradle, select File → Export and to export in CSV set the File Type to CSV:

To export the pre-defined item type Requirements, ensure that the Info Type is set to Requirements (which it is by default) and select CSV Fields… to specify which attributes of the requirements should appear in the CSV file:

The dialog is initialised with the minimum fields needed to be able to import requirements into Cradle, so if you plan to export requirements into a CSV file and then import this file back into Cradle, then you should not remove any of these default fields. You can reorder them using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

Define whatever other fields you want to appear in the CSV file. Do this by selecting an empty field in the left hand list and then double-click an attribute in the right hand list to assign it to the selected CSV field. If you make a mistake, double click the assignment in the left hand list to clear it and return the attribute to the right hand list. If you want to export all attributes, the quickest way is to select Clear All, which clears the CSV field list and then select Swap All to swap all of the attributes from the right hand list into the CSV field list.

To export the same fields that we saw in our example requirements CSV file, you will need to add the TEXT frame to the default list:

Then select OK to close the dialog.

You can optionally control format options for the CSV file by selecting CSV Options…:

but the default options should be sufficient, and are compatible with Excel.

To perform the CSV export, specify the items to be exported, either by setting options in the Export Information dialog:

  • Domain and Model select information based on a domain and model namespace (only valid for model-related information: diagrams, data definitions and specifications)
  • Whose data selects information by ownership
  • Delete state selects information based on whether it is, or is not, marked recoverable
  • The Identity field can select information by its identity attribute (a Number of a Name)
  • The Category field will select information based on any of its categories matching the supplied value
  • The From date and To date fields select information based on its last modification date
  • The Min UID and Max UID fields select information based on the unique identifier (UID) part of the Project Database Unique ID (PDUID) attribute that is a part of every item in a Cradle database

or select Defined by query and choose a query to select the information to be exported.

Finally, specify an output filename and select Export:

and the items will be exported:

You can produce a log of the export by selecting Log… to display a report listing which items were exported:

The mappings for exporting system notes are similar, except that we set the Info Type to be System Notes and optionally set the Note Type (if we want to restrict the export to just one type of system note items) and we must export the Type, Number, Version and Draft ID attributes, at a minimum, if we want to be able to import the CSV file back into Cradle:

If we want to export cross references, set the Info Type to Cross References and define which cross reference attributes are to be exported, the minimum needed to be able to import the resulting CSV file will be listed by default in the CSV Fields dialog: