In the latest version of Cradle’s Web Access it is possible to show images in a View. In previous versions of Cradle it was only possible to show an item’s images in a Form.
This small but significant enhancement moves the remote Web Access client’s capabilities nearer the WorkBench rich desktop client’s functionality. Therefore, wherever you are located you can get detailed access to your data.
If too much information is showing in the history cell of a View, it can now be filtered by the number of entries and/or by a date. This makes it easier to see what’s changed in, say, the last week.
In the “View Details” dialog select the “Item History” cell. Then in the Cell Properties select whether to limit the “Maximum number of changes”, entering a maximum number to show. Then select “Changes within date range” in order to enter relative or absolute date values for the history filter.
OK so it’s a homophone, caused by a typo. But misunderstood requirements can have a big impact.
Pi Day itself can throw up the question which part of the world do you live in? Today 14/03/2017 specifying in increasing component granularity dd/mm/yyyy is nothing like π. In reverse as UTC 2017-03-14T12:46:14Z again does not have any π significance. However, living elsewhere in the world, as long as it still used the Julian calendar, dates are written differently, if you swap the components to mm/dd/yyyy 3/14/2017 does have a meaning, although we have to skip back in time to 1592 to really tell the joke!
Writing unambiguous requirements is about being clear in your language, precise in your detail and knowing your audience. Otherwise you may end up with Pi on your face…..
A Tasty Meat and Vegetable Pie
According to piday.org Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159.
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
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
The event was attended by several automotive companies including DAF, Chiptronic and Marcopolo, and by many students from UTFPR.
In the query details dialog, users can now set the ‘Delete State’ of linked (or not linked items).
Those states are:
Normal an item considered live and accessible
Recoverable an item that has been deleted but could be brought back, hidden in most operations
All a combination of the two.
Why is Delete State Important?
It would be logical to run a query to check that all your Requirements are linked to System Requirements. Therefore, setting a query to return Requirements ‘Not Linked’ to System Requirements that are of a Normal Delete State would give you the required list.
On the other hand, before permanently deleting a batch of items, you may want to check that they are not linked to Recoverable items first. In that way you can ensure those items linked items are deleted too.
Since the state of both the primary item and the linked items can be set this gives all query combinations for an item’s deleted status.
Everyone likes tools to run quickly. Below is a list of notes, actions and checks to ensure that your Cradle system will run as quickly as possible:
1. Check the time between clients and the server. In the ‘Help’ tab, select ‘About WorkBench’ and ‘Resources’. Look for the ‘average roundtrip time’ line. If the CDS is in your local network, it should be <2 msec. If you connect over a VPN, it should be <25 msec. If longer, you may have a problem.
Preferences Dialog
2. Consider turning off user preference ‘Refresh items when modifying links’. In the ‘Home’ tab, click ‘Preferences’, then ‘UI Control’
3. Consider turning off ‘indicate linked items in trees’ in the same group of preferences
4. Consider enabling caching of top-level items in Project sidebar, reduces time to find top-level items, in UI Control -> Sidebar preferences
Sidebar preferences
5. Note that when links are created, modified or deleted, the change histories are updated for items at both ends of the link
6. Changes to links to/from items could raise alerts to be sent as and possibly sent to large numbers of users
7. Run the cross reference and item integrity checks in the ‘Project’ tab to find and fix any problems. Issues can arise from unvalidated imports of data or links.
8. Ensure that message compression and server-side processing are both active. Look in ‘CDS Settings’ in the preferences for any user. Checkboxes may be greyed out (can only be set on the server), but its set/not set value is accurate.
9. Large numbers of unread alerts will slow Cradle down at login and logout. Check options in the ‘Alerts’ section of the schema, from ‘Project Setup’ in the ‘Project’ tab. Use ‘Delete alerts’ in this tab to remove current user’s alerts.
Delete alerts
10. Read the performance section in the System Administration manual
Cradle stores all dates and times in UTC, which is most likely not your local time zone.
To ensure that Cradle displays all dates and times using your local time zone, you need to set the ‘Display time zone’ option in Preferences, as shown below. The offset from UTC option is for customers who have users in multiple time zones with a central server. It can be more convenient for everyone to have the same view of times, that of the central server, rather than their local time zone.
As more functionality is constantly being added to Cradle, the number of elements in the project schema grow. If you want to study only part of the schema, the report could be quite long and unwieldy. Cradle 7.2 allows users to select the portions of the schema they want to show in a report.
Report parts of the project schema
New Cradle 7.3.1 Reports Feature
We’ve made coloursets report more clearly in the Schema Report.
Coloursets – Report
Coloursets are a means to easily and consistently apply foreground and background colours to diagram symbols, or item type definitions. you can see more information in the Cradle help.
We are pleased to announce the release of Cradle-7.2:
Cradle-7.2 contains a range of new capabilities that are described in its Release Notes.
Customers with active maintenance have been sent an e-mail notification of this release, and details of which enhancement requests and bug reports are in it.
Some of the highlights are:
Full support for IPv6 networking
Availability of 64-bit Cradle for Linux, use of the latest Windows .NET and improved support of Office 2016
Locking projects and disconnecting users through Project Manager
Improvements in custom web UI components, and the as-supplied Basic web UI
Dashboards as dials in WorkBench and in web UIs
More flexibility with Change Tasks in the CM system
Extended quality checks in the Conformance Checker and for SysML in the Consistency Checker
Find and replace
Extensions to queries and views
New functional modelling options with PADs and IDEF0
You need a new Security Code for Cradle-7.2, other Security Codes cannot be used. If you have not received a new code and are under maintenance, please contact support@threesl.com. If you would like to discuss upgrading an out of date system, please contact salesdetails@threesl.com. If you have a single user version you can purchase the latest revision at the 3SL shop.
There is a database conversion from 7.1 to 7.2. The converter which will run automatically if you install Cradle-7.2, over the top of, in the same directory as, the earlier version of Cradle from which you are upgrading.
You must upgrade all of your Cradle installation to 7.2. (clients and server) as mixed versions, e.g. Cradle-7.1 clients / Cradle-7.2 server, and vice-versa are not supported.
I have a Cunning Plan…..
OK it does not have to be cunning, it just has to be clear. Cradle provides a bi-directional integration with Microsoft Project® that allows a Cradle project to be associated with multiple Project schedules and bidirectional updates with Project. By linking activities in each schedule to become a WBS hierarchy in Cradle the loop is closed and the plan and the Cradle requirements and models are all linked.
The main reasons to control things this way is to ensure there is no inconsistency between the management planning and the project engineering. To ensure that each engineering activity is planned for and each element of the plan has some actual work assigned to it, avoiding incompleteness. A plan linked to Cradle communicates the holistic view of progress and items all in one place.
Our Facebook account is connected to our Twitter feed, so if you can’t follow us on Twitter (@threesl), you can still get the hints and tips via your Facebook timeline, see the (3SLCradle) page.
YouTube Learning
Our popular YouTube channel has a number of ‘How to’ style videos to help you with particular aspects of Cradle, requirements management or systems engineering. We know that some of our customers may find a particular aspect complex, and although there is comprehensive online help documentation and articles provided, having a video take you through the steps can make a real difference. Of course 3SL can also offer full training, giving you broad coverage or highly tailored content as you require, contact us to discuss further.
Remembering the old adage “Tell me and I forget, Show me and I remember, Involve me and I understand” seems very appropriate. But what aspects are most appropriate to you our customer?
In this article 3SL’s managing director Mark Walker, asks for your feedback to guide 3SL’s video output.
“But the customer has sent it as an mp4!”
Your boss wants you to record the evidence of the test to provide full traceability
The testing house has sent a video of the compression strength test
You’re ‘stuck’ with all your requirements and tests in Cradle and now you have a video…
Don’t worry it’s not a problem. Although Cradle may not be able to play videos, it can store all sorts of information in its database, or by reference to external files. We provide a large list of files pre-defined, but Cradle can easily cope with new file types.
In this case you would add a binary frame to store video, you may have a directory alongside the Cradle database where these files reside, so an ‘As File’ frame would make sense, or if it is also to be controlled through the Cradle CMS (Configuration Management System) it could be “In PDB” (Project Database). You would choose our favourite app to view them in, then you would assign a frame of this type to your, say, TEST item type. Now you have the traceability you need with the test evidence referenced from the TEST item and links to the SYSTEM_REQUIREMENT through to the original customer Requirement.
In our LinkedIn discussion we describe adding a Document to an item.
Hints of the Month
Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:
A bright ‘Red’ box in the middle of the table screams Urgent/Highest/Action, when running a query you may wish to Highlight Important Values with Colour as described in this article.
No-one wants to lose their hard crafted work, our tips on Safeguarding Against Unintended Data Loss could ensure that if something does go wrong, you can limit its impact to your project and business.
Twitter feed, so if you can’t follow us on Twitter (