A form is a layout template that is used to display information about items within Cradle. There are multiple attributes of an item that may be displayed, from the name, to categories, to frames. Forms can soon get complicated, this is where collapsible panels can help.
Collapsible Panels
A feature new in Cradle 7.4
Collapsible panels are placed as a row, or a column on a form definition. These can be barked to display as a normal row/column when opened or to “Show collapsed by default”
The bar at the top of the panel toggles its open state.
Q&A
Some of the questions often asked regarding forms.
Q: What if a user does not have a skill required to see an attribute?
A: The form will not display this particular aspect of the item. There is no need to create a separate form.
Q: I’ve just added some new frames and categories. Do I have to design a new form?
A: No, the Automatic scope forms will generate a basic form with the new elements included.
Q: Do I have to start from scratch designing a form?
A: No, you can choose any existing form (including the automatically generated ones) suitable for that item type, make your changes and then ‘Save As‘ to store the newly altered definition.
Q : Do you have to show everything that every user needs on a form?
A: No, forms can have a scope of System, Automatic, Project, User type,Team, User, or Personal. This allows different users to show different aspects of an item most relevant to them.
Q: Can I show related items?
A: Absolutely, linked items can be shown within a form.
Q: Can I convert existing forms?
A: Yes, just select an existing Row or Column and change the Syle from Basic to Panel. then Save or Save As
When working in a multi engineer environment, it is important to communicate. However, when the team is spatially/geographically distributed it’s not easy to shout across the office that you’ve just updated a particular requirement. You may send an email to your colleagues, but it is easy to forget. It’s much easier if the tool you’re using does it for you. Cradle raises alerts for system and item level activities. These can be toggled active, the recipient chosen and the importance set in the Project Schema.
Cradle Alert Settings
Recipients can be a Cradleindividual, a user list, an automatic selection or a category distribution. When the user next signs in they will see their alerts.
Cradle Alerts
Alerts by Email
Whilst it is really handy to see the alerts that have been raised when working in the tool, it’s not much use if you’re not logged on. Difficult though it may be to believe, not every user is constantly logged onto Cradle! However, most users are able to accept emails. A number of enhancements were made to Cradle’s email alerts in version 7.4. Previously email could only be sent if the user had a MAPI client on their Windows® machine or SMTP on their Linux client. Now Cradle ships with an SMTP program that will connect directly to your company email server. We now provide templates for the emails that you can customise for corporate style or by including/filtering information.
Setup
In the Cradle setup file cradle.ini or cradle.rc find the MAIL_parameters and fill in your company’s settings. MAIL_HOST = mail.mycompany.co.uk MAIL_PORT = 587 MAIL_LINE_LEN = 500 MAIL_DEF_SENDER = MAIL_CMD = "$C_MAILSEND_EXEFILE" -smtp $MAIL_HOST -port $MAIL_PORT -to $RECIPIENT -from $SENDER -name "$SENDNAME" -sub "$SUBJECT" -mime-type "$MIMETYPE" -cs "$CHARACTERSET" -msg-body "$PATH" -q
Alert Templates
The email templates exist in %CRADLEHOME%/admin/email_templates where the three main alert types have templates that can be altered. The settings are documented within the template. Specific templates can be added for particular alerts if you want to add specific content, say instructing people how to conduct a review. Cradle URLs also supported in item alerts, allowing the recipient to click and open Cradle on the subject item.
In the words of Phineas T. Barnum starting with the smallest blocks you can build it “….one brick at a time…”[1] and then you should be able to achieve anything you can dream of.
LEGO® bricks
Consider your ‘dream’ as the top level requirement, this is your ultimate goal. The problem is you’re not sure what constitutes a ‘brick’. Unless it’s a wall you’re building the smallest parts are unlikely to be equal. If only all world engineering problems could be solved with LEGO®! The aim, however is still the same, take the goal and break it down to atomic parts that we can quantify, specify and build. Together those elements will form the whole.
Breakdown Structure
Hierarchies are an important way to describe, link and visualise the ‘dream’ you’re building. The bottom of the hierarchy should be as close to the ‘brick’ as possible. A self contained, unit, the ‘atom’ within your project.
People
Most people are familiar with a company structure from the MD to the process workers via managers and team leaders workers. Imagine a company where every worker tried to talk to the main boss, as soon as there are more than a handful of employees, this would become unmanageable. Conversely consider too many layers of middle management, all pulling in slightly different directions, then the workers end up without clear direction. It’s a balancing act.
Requirement Breakdown
Your ‘dream’ may be to reach for the stars, or it may be to install the machinery to make spaghetti. In both cases you have an end goal, the main top level requirement. In each case these problems can be broken down into smaller problems, launch, travel and land, or ingredients, process and pack.
A Collection of SBS Hierarchies
These in turn may break down into mechanical, electrical and software problems. The decision as to where to break will depend on the industry you are in, the number of issues that need to be tackled and the logical breakdown of the components. In this comparison, the launch may be considered completely different to the travel or landing requirements. However, in the factory system, it may be more prudent to devolve the level directly into the mechanical and electrical areas as there may be no significant difference between process and packing. Falling out the bottom the atomic ‘bricks’ may now be motors, control sensors, and pipes.
Realistically a more complex project can consider in parallel with the ‘dream’ or ‘User Requirements’, that there are the ‘System Requirements‘ which possibly lead to ‘Derived Requirements‘. These in turn link to the ‘System Breakdown Structure‘ (SBS) and ‘Product Breakdown Structure’ (PBS) .
Work Breakdown
Project plans process
When the problem has been broken down into the smallest conceptual parts the order that these must be assembled can also be broken into a hierarchy. The mechanical systems must be installed before they can be wired, the control systems may be developed in parallel, but they can’t be integration tested until the sensors are installed. A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a plan to ensure that the right bricks are in place at the right time to support the next layer of the structure.
Dependencies
Complex Project Dependencies
There will be a complex relationship between each of the hierarchies in your project. If your team of electrical engineers are required to complete two different parts of the WBS they can’t be completed in parallel. This is where plan schedules are useful. Microsoft® Project is one way to achieve a schedule using Gantt Charts to illustrate the sequencing. The links between which System Requirement links to an item in the SBS or which Derived Requirement links to a PBS item must also be maintained.
Tools
Therefore, to manage a big problem it needs to be broken down into smaller atomic ‘bricks’. But the interrelationship of those components is complex and needs to be managed. Cradle allows all these components to be managed, linked, visualised and reported. From whatever your original concept, to the final brilliant creation, you can build it one brick at a time.
The UI of the WorkBench tool in 3SL’s Cradle is very flexible. It allows you to display the items and the results of running queries in individual tabs. You can split the display into panesand have many of these tabs in each pane. You may need to increase the UI Object limit if you want to have a very complex WorkBench UI.
UI Object Limit
Each part of the UI uses Windows resources called User interface objects. There is a limit on the number of these UI Objects that each WorkBench process can allocate.
The default is a maximum of 10,000 UI Objects per process. This can be increased to a maximum of 18,000 UI Objects per process by changing a setting in the Windows registry.
If you open so many tabs that WorkBench exhausts the UI Objects that it can allocate, then the WorkBench UI will hang.
Increase the UI Object Limit
To increase the UI Objects Limit you must edit the Windows registry value:
Double click the entry for USERProcessHandleQuota, and set Decimal
Enter the new value 18000 and click OK:
USERProcessHandleQuota
Exit the registry editor
This change takes effect on any processes created from now on.
Do I Need to Do This?
In general, no you do not need to make this change.
We have only seen one case where this change was necessary. In this case, a customer had a form with 75 frames display in it. The WorkBench UI hung when a user tried to open the 6th item concurrently when using this form.
Increasing this limit allowed the user to open 10 items concurrently using this (very!) large form.
Of course, if you want to increase the UI Object limit as a precaution, then it will not do any harm!
As we eat our way through natural resources, our ever increasing hunger for power has to be fed.
One of the most significant developments of recent years has been the size and efficiency and installation methods used for wind farms. Global Wind Day 15th June (#GlobalWindDay) as defined by GlobalWindDay.org seeks to highlight and celebrate these successes.
Walney Wind Turbine
Local Engineering Feat
Here at 3SL towers, we’re only a stones throw away from one of the world’s largest offshore wind-farms. Situated 15 Km off the coast it’s a great example of large scale engineering. Walney 1 and Walney 2 farms have a combined capacity of 367MW. Over 100 turbines in depths of water of around 20m it was quite an undertaking. Undersea cables bring the power ashore across Morecambe Bay towards Heysham.
Planning Large Projects
There are so many aspects to consider when planning a project. The more complex and the greater the importance of good requirements management. However, that’s not to say that you don’t need to manage requirements for small projects. This is why we believe it is important to offer the same functionality for single users all the way to full enterprise deployments. So whether you are planning a small scale windmill atop your holiday cottage, or a grand scale farm, Cradle could be the tool for you. Starting at €349 (June2018 price) , there’s no excuse for ‘just writing it in a document‘ and a ‘couple of spread sheets‘ shop now or contact us for enterprise licensing.
The system should allow the placement of as many bubbles of air in two nets within a 90 minutes. The system should compare and display the result.
Modelled
When initially modelled their appears to be a large inefficiency in the acquisition phase of the singular data item, or bubble of air, or ‘ball’ as it is sometimes referred to.
Parallel Operation
Improved
By planning some tasks in parallel it is possible to improve the efficiency. The provision of multiple bubbles and the removal of contention provides a much smoother and more efficient operation.
Just a Thought
Maybe there are other aspects that had not been considered, and are difficult to model. Contention in this scenario can be regarded as entertainment. Not something that is easy to model in an eFFBD! #WorldCupRussia2018
If you have any coffee break thoughts on system modelling the World Cup 2018 , maybe you could share! social-customer@threesl.com
June, halfway through the year, its easy to measure and define when we reach that point. Fundamentally that’s because the length of the year is clearly defined and we can measure when we reach the 1/2 way point.
Projects are not that simple.
If we’re unlucky we have no idea where we are or how far through the pile of requirements we have moved.
In a better position we have an idea how many requirements we have and how many have been linked to design solutions and possibly how many of those have been tested. A dashboard can help you quickly visualise these measurements. The real problem, however, is knowing how much effort you have expended and how much is still needed. Numerically you may have completed 90% of your requirements, with 80% of your budgeted effort. Can the remaining 10% be completed with the remaining 20% budget?
Effort / Completeness
One method would be to assign an LoE (Level of Effort) to each of the tasks. This then allows a weighted metric to be produced showing the numeric percentage of completed design elements compared to the current weighted effort expended.
This example show that although there are only 13% of the Design elements to complete we expect there is 46% of the total work still to be completed. Better check the budget and required finish date pronto!
Cradle Version 7.4
Cradle 7.4
It’s great to see so many downloads of Cradle 7.4 and we hope you are enjoying the new features. We’re adding blog entries to cover these, and you can search for these using the blog tag “cradle-7.4”
If you’ve not had a new security code and have a maintenance agreement, request a code by email.
However, those buying Cradle Enterprise licences can choose to donate £30 per licence bought to a charity of their choice. Ts&Cs apply
Circus
Last month our we chose to make a donation to Circus Starr “The Circus with a Purpose” ‘A touring circus boasting world-class, professional artists from across the globe. It was first founded in 1987 and provides free seats for thousands of disadvantaged, disabled or vulnerable children, whilst helping to raise much needed funds for local charities.’
Banking Changes
Banking Changes
As we have said previously, there have been some changes in UK banking as some banks have been split so as to isolate traditional banking from investment banking activities. Barclays have confirmed the new SWIFT BIC code is BUKBGB22. Our sort code and account numbers have stayed the same but our IBAN numbers have changed. This is especially important to our distributors and overseas customers. Please contact salesdetails@threesl.com to request our IBAN numbers. Updates are posted here.
GDPR
GDPR
Our new policies have been released, if you didn’t see the last email please read Privacy Policy Update article.
If you’ve got any noteworthy GDPR stories / articles that would be worth sharing let us know social-GDPR@threesl.com !!
Social Media
Twitter
Big Battery
We love keeping an eye on what’s new with our customers and what’s changing in the engineering community. This development is one BIG battery engineering challenge.
There are occasions where you want a number of components of an item to be unique, aside from its Identifier. Attribute sets allow you to specify combinations of attributes that are to be unique for an item type.
Set Components
They can be defined for requirements and system notes. Each attribute set can contain one or more attributes chosen from:
Key
Category (single value and multiple value categories)
Sets
You can define as few as one or as many as thirty three attributes (all categories and the key) for each set.
An item type can have multiple attribute sets.
In Practice
As an easy to explain concept, this example shows an asset register. The managers of the multiple Town Lodge sites each have assets installed in the building. To aid maintenance and asset recording, they want to ensure combination of:
the Building it’s in
the Location within the building
the Item type for the equipment
and an identifying index
are unique.
By setting each of these components as categories in the ASSET item type, and then selecting Attribute Sets adding an Attribute Set called “Asset identifier” made from these categories, they can check for uniqueness.
Attribute Set – Setup
As the user is assigning new items into the asset register, when they attempt to save the item, a uniqueness check is calculated. In this instance the combination has been used before, so the user is not allowed to save this item. In this case all they need to do is up the index of the ‘routers’ in the reception area. Obviously this can be any meaningful combination for your project.
Attribute Set – Operation
Note:
These Attribute Sets checks are not as restrictive as an item’s identity. You would not be allowed to create a duplicate ID/Version/Draft of an item in the database. It is applied when editing and saving an item. This allows you to freely copy items without having to decide on multiple unique combinations at the instant of copying. On subsequently editing and attempting to save the item, the checks would be performed. In a similar manner to ‘Mandatory Categories’.
A Regex is simply sequence of characters that define a search pattern. This pattern is then compared with the target test string and will produce a match if the pattern allows.
Cradle Queries
When retrieving information from the database, Cradle uses a query to filter the data returned. It looks for many matches against different aspects of the item.
Ending Wildcards and Contains
Wildcard matches are available on the Identity and the Key fields The ones most likely to be identifying a hierarchy.
In the example below a query has been run with three values in the identity field.
REQ-1
REQ-1.
REQ-1*
The results show
Only REQ-1 returned and exact match
REQ-10, REQ-11, REQ-12 …. onwards a text match bringing back the matches greater than the stem. This is really useful for hierarchical numbers, bringing back the children of 1.1 (using 1.1.) say.
REQ-1, REQ-10, REQ-11 a text match where the stem is followed by zero or more characters. This brings back the stem value too.
Wildcard Query
Contains matches are available on Name and Comment fields. They are case insensitive and look for the string of characters anywhere in the component.
In the example below
regulation
Results in
Regulations
CAA Regulations
Airworthiness Regulations
Noise Regulations
This can be a little too wide.
Regex Query
Regex Query
Choose Regex
In order to provide more control it is now (Cradle 7.4) possible to switch to a Regex match. Choose the dropdown at the end of the field and select Regex Match. This will change how the search text is applied.
In the example above
^Regulation
Brings back
“Regulations” only because the “^” at the beginning is a regex anchor to the start of the line.
Expressions
If we were searching for part numbers we might use ^Pt:[AB]+.* to bring back all parts starting Pt:A and Pt:B followed by any other characters.
There are many flavours of Regex, Cradle is based on the PCRE flavour. Instead of documenting the whole set of patterns, it is usually more appropriate for users to use their favourite documentation. We like www.regular-expressions.info/ and www.regex101.com/
Pros / Cons
Databases have a number of keys and indexes. Cradle is designed to work with these to produce results most effectively. Wildcard endings are more efficient as they match the way the data is sorted internally. Regex expressions have to match against all database entries. therefore there is a performance implication to using this more flexible matching. This is why both methods are provided and users can switch whichever they want on.
