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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.

March 2010 [Cradle 6.2]

Startup Guide

Cradle-6.2 provides a web-based resource to assist new users and evaluators to explore Cradle and learn about its capabilities.

This resource is a set of web pages that are installed with every Cradle client installation and which contains:

  • An introduction to Cradle
  • A step-by-step guide to creating a new Cradle project and populating it with data
  • A list of follow-on activities for evaluators and new users that includes links to other Cradle documentation and information resources

On Windows, the Startup Guide can be launched by selecting:

Start → Programs → Cradle → Start Up

and on UNIX it can be started by opening your web browser on its initial page:

$CRADLEHOME/doc/index.htm

When opened, the Startup Guide provides an introductory page and top-level menu:

In the Start Here section, in step 1, click the Your Introduction to Cradle link which provides the introduction page from where you can access the Cradle Overview and the Cradle Tutorial:

We strongly recommend that you begin by reading the Cradle Overview.

After this, we strongly recommend that you read the Cradle Tutorial whilst working with Cradle. The Cradle Tutorial provides a series of guided tours through the Cradle tools using a demonstration project that is provided with all Cradle installations.

You can select the Brief introductions to the Cradle modules link to see an introduction to each of the software components in Cradle:

For example, selecting the Project Manager link produces:

After you have explored the tool introductions and documents in section 1 of the Startup Guide, select the Startup guide – start here links on the left side of all of the web pages and proceed to section 2 by selecting I have installed Cradle What do I do now? The Simple Evaluation Project to reach the evaluation part of the Startup Guide.

This is a collection of step-by-step instructions to create a new Cradle project and populate it with representative data, in this case for a car park:

We encourage all evaluators of Cradle to follow these step-by-step instructions as the first part of their Cradle evaluation. There are 8 steps in the evaluation.

After you have worked through the evaluation project, you will have all of the skills needed to create your own Cradle project and load your own data into it.

To work with your own data, select the Startup guide – start here links on the left side of all of the web pages and follow section 3 by selecting the link I have completed the evaluation project. How do I use my own data? in the main page which will direct you to a set links to further information and Cradle documents that you can use to plan how to apply Cradle to your own projects:

This page shows the main steps in creating a Cradle project and loading your data into it. Each of these steps is accompanied by a description of how to complete that step. For example, selecting the link Create a new Project with the default schema provides full instructions to create a new project:

We will be pleased to help you at any stage in the evaluation process, either to answer questions or to provide guidance to explain how Cradle could be applied to your projects in your organisation.