New MBSE Reference in Improved 3SL Website

We recently released an update to our website in which all pages have a new navigation bar that contains shortcut icons to move directly to the most popular areas in the site. We also improved the speed with which the website loads, so the main page should now load in one third the time that it used to take.

Most significantly, we have added a ‘Reference’ section that wil contain a range of background systems engineering information, not necessarily related to Cradle. We have begun the reference section with a large volume of basic MBSE (model based systems engineering) information, see here:

https://www.threesl.com/pages/reference

in which you will find detailed descriptions of all of the diagram types for the three groups of modelling notations supported by Cradle:

– SysML
– Functional, Architecture, Data, which includes ADARTS, eFFBD, IDEF, SASD (DFD, STD, ERD and so on), architecture (PAD and AID), and many others
– UML

Please tell us what you think of the information in this section, and also try our website from your smartphone! We value your feedback!

New MBSE Reference in Improved 3SL Website
New MBSE Reference in Improved 3SL Website

3SL Partner Hosts MBSE Open-day for the Automotive Sector

OpenCADD

3SL’s Brazilian Partner OpenCADD Advanced Technology hosted a MBSE event for the automotive sector on 15th and 16th February 2017 at UTFPR Ponta Grossa, Paraná in Brazil:

UTFPR Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil
UTFPR Ponta Grossa, Paraná – Brazil

The focus for the event was embedded software development in the automotive sector, and included discussion of the software tools provided by OpenCADD in Brazil, which includes 3SL’s Cradle tool. OpenCADD sent a strong team to UTFPR to promote and describe the application and use of MBSE:

OpenCADD Team at UTFPR
OpenCADD Team at UTFPR

The event was attended by several automotive companies including DAF, Chiptronic and Marcopolo, and by many students from UTFPR.

MBSE Presentation at UTFPR
MBSE Presentation at UTFPR

 

February 2017 Newsletter

Happy Chinese New Year

新年快乐!
3SL 祝愿我们的所有客户,合作伙伴和供应商2017吉祥如意!

Regulation, Compliance and Traceability from Cradle

Discovery, Implementation, Demonstration, is this really what making a product is all about?

From a product development point of view, Elicitation, Analysis, Specification and Validation may be terms an engineer is more familiar with. However, we work in a world where regulation and compliance are hugely important factors in a product’s lifecycle.

As developers and producers we must discover the sets of codes, regulations and standards that form the non functional requirements of our product. We must the implement the changes to our product design to ensure the end product is compliant. Before delivery we must be able to trace our designs and decisions to demonstrate how we comply.

For further discussion on the parallel paths that a product lifecyle must comply, please read one of the 3SL’s whitepapers here.

Twitter Tips

Thanks to those extra follows from January, don’t forget to retweet whenever you find a tip helpful and keep using those #3SL and #Cradle tags.

Baseline Past and Present

Whenever a project reaches a defining moment it is advisable for the project to be baselined. A line in the sand to say ‘we are at this point’, a point from which further development and changes can stem.

However, sometimes we want to return to and extract a particular baseline, say to use as the starting point for a new project variant. See how to export this information in our linked in article

Cradle is Citrix Ready

Large or complex deployment, centrally managed? A number of our customers use Cradle deployed in a Citrix environment.

Cradle 7.1 has been certified for Citrix XenApp 7.6 and can be accessed through the Citrix Ready Marketplace

False Positives

Any software developers out there? We’re gathering experiences, encountered while developing and distributing software, of the eternal battle between virus protection, legitimate development and malware hackers. Please join the discussion here on LinkedIn or see it in the ‘Cradle – RM/SE Tool from 3SL’ group.

Many Roles

Do you sit as a person with many hats? Today you are Engineer, tomorrow you are QA Manager? In smaller organisations many people find they wear a number of hats, but like to keep their operations separate. Whether this is from an administration and traceability point of view, or just to prevent a change being made to data accidentally by a role with an elevated privilege (think sudo in Linux). It may also be the case that you want all these roles to exist in the future, but while the embryonic project is being set up and developed there is only a small team working on it. These roles are later handed over to new colleagues.

Cradle allows you to set up all the users individually and then provide a common alias or in Cradle terms a ‘Switch Identity’. The user can then switch between the various roles without the more time consuming logout – remember different password – login loop.

This is further illustrated in our LinkedIn discussion.

MBSE Buzz!

Model Based System Engineering is all the rage at the likes of the NASA / JPL symposium 25th – 27th Jan. Why not have a look at Cradle’s New MBSE Reference in our improved 3SL website.

Hints of the Month

Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:

Need to estimate your hardware requirements over the life of a project see the Database Size Calculator.

Want to show every user a special message before they start? Use the Login Messages and User Acknowledgement facility.

Happy about installing, IT want to know everything is OK, drop in at VirusTotal – see Check Cradle Files are Free From Viruses.

New to managing documents and statements you can Avoid Problems Opening Source Documents and Statements here.

Seeing an odd Word error ? Read all about it Word Error – Ambiguous name detected: TmpDDE.

Don’t worry if you computer raises a False Positive from Symantec and Trend Micro Office Scan.  AV Products will explain why.

The world still revolves round documents (paper or electronic) it’s an easy way for humans to deal with data, from Cradle you can Publish a Formal Document.

Installation issues? A few of articles that may help Installation Issues With .NET Framework, Installation Issue With Windows C Runtime, Installation Issue With Office 2016 / 365 / ClickToRun

Cradle-7.1.1 Released

We are pleased to announce that we have released Cradle-7.1.1, an update to the Cradle-7.1 release that added SysML into the range of MBSE notations available in Cradle’s integrated modelling tools.

The Cradle-7.1.1 release changes the way that equipments and ports are drawn in Physical Architecture Diagrams, allowing public ports to be drawn more neatly and more densely inside equipment symbols. It also adds a new ability to run queries on items that are indirectly linked or not linked to other types of iterms, and a variety of other small updates.

Security Codes for Cradle-7.1 will also work with Cradle-7.1.1.

If you have a single-user Cradle-7.1 system, such as Cradle-SE Pro, then you can also upgrade to Cradle-7.1.1.

To get the new release, please go to:

www.threesl.com

and login and download the software from the Resources section of our website.

If you install Cradle-7.1.1 anywhere, please install it everywhere!

We hope that you will like this new release of Cradle!

Cradle-7.1 – SysML Videos

Our 3SL colleagues in the US have posted a series of videos demonstrating the SysML support in Cradle-7.1. This is a single demonstration, split into a series of parts:

You can access these demonstration videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdnZeLWcaufRjC0MBX1iuuQ

Please look at these videos and see how SysML models can be built in Cradle and how these models can be integrated into other information, including requirements, tests, test cases, defects, issues and risks.

At 3SL we believe that MBSE is the ideal approach (whichever notations you choose to use) but only if it is integrated into all of the other information in your project.

MBSE in isolation is just a bunch of pretty pictures!

Using SysML in a MBSE Process in the Systems Lifecycle

3SL attended the SEC 2016 conference in Washington at the end of last month. We presented a tutorial on how SysML can be used in a MBSE process that is integrated into the rest of the systems lifecycle, including initial needs and requirements capture and following with links to test and delivery.

That presentation can be downloaded from our website here:

https://www.threesl.com/downloads/download.php?version=v7.1&section=presentations&filename=Simple_MBSE_Process_Using_SysML.pdf

and as a compressed link, here:

http://ow.ly/4mTZOq

We hope that you find this presentation helpful!

SysML and MBSE in the Systems Lifecycle – for Executives

3SL attended the SEDC 2016 conference and presented a view of SysML and MBSE in the systems context, for executives. The essence of this presentation is that MBSE is good, SysML is one form of model and associated notations for MBSE, but these cannot be useful unless they are part of an overall process for the complete lifecycle.

The presentation is here:

https://www.threesl.com/downloads/download.php?version=v7.1&section=presentations&filename=MBSE_For_Executives.pdf

And as a short link here:

http://ow.ly/4mU2ir

Visit the Resources section of our website: www.threesl.com for this and many other useful resources!

We hope that this presentation is interesting!

Cradle-7.1 is Available!

We are pleased to announce the release of Cradle-7.1 that introduces SysML into Cradle’s existing modelling capabilities and allows SysML to be integrated with the needs, goals, objectives, user stories, sprints, SBS, PBS, test cases, verifications and validations (and so on…) in the full systems engineering lifecycle.

This is more than mere MBSE. This is lifecycle-enabled MBSE!

Only from 3SL and only from Cradle!

For more details, visit www.threesl.com and talk to us at salesdetails@threesl.com or me at: mark.walker@threesl.com or contact me through LinkedIn!

If you want to upgrade to Cradle-7.1, you will need a new Security Code as Security Codes for previous versions (such as 7.0 and 6.8.x) will not work with this release. Also note that if you upgrade Cradle anywhere (such as a client or your server) then you must upgrade all Cradle installations.

Once again, we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who gave up their time in the Beta test programme. Your hard work is very much appreciated!

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!