Editing Dates in Cradle – A Tip

Editing dates in Cradle can be useful. You may want to change the default date format, or it could be you need to bring a review date forward for selected items. In this article I will explain how you can do this, including tips which may help.

Attributes

Cradle allows attributes to be defined as dates. These dates are stored by default using the format yyyy/mm/dd in the database.  However, you can control how dates are displayed, for example as: dd/mm/yy or as mm/dd/yy. Date fields are displayed with a ‘date chooser‘ that displays a calendar that you can use to change months and select days.

If you enter a date before 2000, such as: 23/09/95 then you cannot enter a year number such as: 07 to mean 2007. Similarly, if you enter a date with a year such as 16, then this will be interpreted to be 2016 and you cannot manually enter a year such as 99 to mean 1999.

Editing Tips

Date picker in Cradle
Date Picker
  • When you select a date field, the day, month and year components of a date can be selected individually
  • The cursor up and cursor down fields can be used to change a day, month or year by one, moving forwards and backwards, and you can move through 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001
  • TAB can be used to move forward through the components of a date field
  • You can press CTRL-TAB to move backwards through the components of a date field
  • You can also use the ‘date chooser’ at any time

The ability to use the cursor keys and TAB and CTRL-TAB may be helpful.

Display Preferences

To set your choice of date display, open the User Preferences -> UI Control  and select in Date and Time Display.

How to select the date display preferences
Date Preferences

The Preferences dialog lets you control settings that are used to customise your WorkBench environment and set default options. For more information you can take a look at this cradle help article.

Article updated 17/09/2018 – Added introduction

Cradle-7.1 Beta Test Progressing Well

The Beta testing of Cradle-7.1 has been underway for a little while.

The testing is going very well, with useful feedback from the Beta testers about the new SysML capability and the other enhancements in this latest Cradle release.

We expect to make an announcement about Cradle-7.1 at the end of this month.

We would like to express our thanks to those who have been able to get involved, your help is very much appreciated!

With best regards

Disabling Old Cradle Add-In from Excel

If you have upgraded from Cradle-6.8 – when we had an add-in for Excel – to Cradle-7.0, then you will have seen the new, and consierably more capable, capture utility. This new capture utility is shown in a Cradle tab in the Excel ribbon.

If the old Add-Ins tab is still visible, then you can remove it. This may be part of your personal Excel setup and so is in your Windows profile and hence is not something that our installer can change.

To remove the Add-Ins tab from Excel (if you see it):

1. Start Excel
2. Right click anywhere in the ribbon and choose ‘customise ribbon’
3. On the right hand side of the dialog, de-select the ‘Add-Ins’ tab (you can check that it is empty!)
4. Click OK

Image showing the cusomize ribbon window in excel
Customize ribbon dialog

We hope that this helps!

Article updated 13/09/2018 – Added image

New Whitepaper – Regulation Compliance

We are pleased to announce that we have a new white paper available for download from our website. This paper discusses some key issues for compliance with regulations affecting product definition, design and development.

You can access it from our website here:

https://www.threesl.com/downloads/white-papers.php

and directly with this link:

https://www.threesl.com/downloads/download.php?version=v7.1&section=whitepapers&filename=rc07701-Regulation_Compliance.pdf

To get the paper, login to our website and download it. If you don’t have a login account please register and then download it!

With best wishes to everyone

February 2016 Newsletter is Available!

We are pleased to advise that the February 2016 newsletter is now available. You can view it here:

https://www.threesl.com/pages/news/webletter-February16/index.php

We have sent several thousand e-mails announcing this newsletter. If you did not receive one, and would like to be added to our distribution list, please send your e-mail address to me at: mark.walker@threesl.com

Force Directed Graphs

We are curious to know what people think of using force directed graphs as a way to display the relationships between items in Hierarchy Diagrams (HIDs).

At the moment, HIDs are drawn using a fixed algorithm, in which you can control:

  • The orientation (vertical or horizontal)
  • If the HID will pivot (change orientation) and if so, the level at which it pivots.

Force directed graphs are an alternative way to arrange the same boxes (items) and lines (cross references) in a HID.

What do you think?

ARTICLE UPDATED 13/09/2018 – CHANGED CATEGORY AND FIXED READABILTY

Cradle-7.1 Platforms Announced!

We are pleased to announce that the following platforms will be supported by Cradle-7.1:

– Linux. Any variant with a version 2.6.32 or later kernel

– Windows:
– Windows 7 (SP1, 32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows Server 2008 (SP2, 32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1, 32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)
– Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit)

– Office:
– 2007 (SP3, 32-bit)
– 2010 (SP2, 32-bit and 64-bit)
– 2013 (SP1, 32-bit and 64-bit)
– 2016 (32-bit and 64-bit)
– Office 365

The changes from Cradle-7.0 are that we have dropped support for Windows Vista and added support for Windows 10, Office 365 and Office 2016. In fact, Cradle-7.0 already runs on Windows 10 and Office 365, but they were not officially supporting by Cradle-7.0. The Cradle-7.1 release adds formal support for these products, and introduces support for Office 2016.

We hope that this is helpful as you plan your migration to Cradle-7.1 and as you consider how Cradle’s platform support fits into the overall Linux/Windows/Office strategy in your organisation.

3SL Presenting at SEDC 2016

We are pleased to announce that we will be presenting a paper at the forthcoming SEDC 2016 conference, either:

– “Executives Will Want to use MBSE”, or
– “Learn a Simple MBSE Process by Connecting the Dots Using SysML Tutorial”

Details of the SEDC conference can be found here:

http://www.sedcconference.org/

We look forward to meeting you there!

SysML is On the Way!

We are pleased to advise that we will soon be releasing our SysML extension to Cradle as part of the Cradle-7.1 release in the next couple of months.

This will be unique in the world of SysML, and we encourage you to investigate what we can offer.

SysML is the UML ‘dialect’ for systems engineering. It has many capabilities. It is, fundamentally, just another modelling notation through which MBSE (model based systems engineering) can be conducted. In that sense, it is nothing new. There have been many other notations in the past, all of which permitted MBSE.

What is different now is that by integrating the latest SysML notation into Cradle’s unique ability to support the entire lifecycle in a single tool, with a single database, we can offer MBSE using the latest notation with complete traceability from requirements and into test management, defect tracking, release, maintenance and ultimate system disposal.

This is unique! We are very excited about it!

We hope that you will join us in the new opportunities that Cradle-7.1 will provide!

We will announce details of the Beta programme very soon, and hope that you can be a part of it!

Creating Cross References

What are Cross References in Cradle?

Cross references are links between items in the database. They are how you show that an item is dependent on another item in some way. For example, one item may satisfy another item, or an item may be a decomposition (a child) of another item.

How are Cross References created?

Drag and Drop

You can select a group of items in a tree and then drag and drop them onto another item. Cross references will be created from the item that you dragged onto, to the items that you dragged.

Image showing the create cross reference dialog
Create Cross Reference Dialog

If you would like more information on creating cross references using the Drag and Drop method then this cradle help article will help you.

Link Facility

You can select an item and choose Make Link From and then select another item and choose Make Link To. A cross reference is created between the items. This is available from the right click popup menus, and Item menus, and has the advantage that it can be used anywhere:

  • Selecting items in a tree
  • Selecting items in a table
  • For an item in a form
  • Selecting an item in a matrix

So it has the advantage that you do not need to have both items open in trees.

Image showing how to make a link from/to
Link From/To

If you would like more information on creating cross references using the Link Facility then this cradle help article will help you.

Link Details Dialog

You can display the Link Details dialog that shows the details of a cross reference, including the user-defined attributes inside it. You can manually enter ‘from’ and ‘to’ Identities into the dialog and select Save to create cross references. This is sometimes the fastest way to create a set of cross references.

Link details dialog
Link details dialog

Of course, you can also import cross references from other tools, from Word tables and Excel spreadsheets. Cross references will also be created automatically when you import from source documents.

For more information on how to create cross references using the Link Details dialog then this cradle help article will help you.

ARTICLE UPDATE 13/09/2018 – IMAGES AND LINKS TO RELATED POSTS ADDED