A simple modelling tool for INCOSE-style systems engineering. That is, a tool for breaking down units of work across multiple teams within a large engineering organisation rather than being a network engineering tool.
This tool is intended to demonstrate basic systems engineering techniques suitable for orchestrating the design of large systems involving multiple teams.
Key concepts include:
- Physical breakdown of a system onto Items and Interfaces
- Logical breakdown of a system onto Functions and Flows
- Maintaining consistency of the model between different levels
- Requirements allocation (TODO)
- Hazard Analysis (TODO)
It is intended to work in coordination with a configuration management system and saves its data as flat CSV files that are amenable to comparison between versions ("diff") and combining different branches ("merge").
This is primarily intended as a teaching aid for now but should be usable in real systems development also. The on-disk format is not documented at this time but is simple and regular enough for other tools to integrate with it if needed.
Building from sources:
- mvn clean install
Debian package:
- Install the package using your preferred tool
- Either -- Run from startup menu, or -- java -jar /usr/share/java/SystemDesign.jar
Generic binary distribution:
- Unzip to your preferred location
- java -jar SytemDesign*.jar
Version Control:
- Version control is supported in conjunction with "git". Additional version control tools may be added in the future.
- A full set of version control operations is not supported. I recommend installing rabbitvcs for Linux or tortoiseGit for Windows users. I do consider version control integration important for this tool but I don't consider it a core competency. Therefore the intended design is to provide simple hooks into version control for common operations but to launch the main version control system user interface for sophisticated operations.
- A three-way merge mechanism is provided that integrates with the git merge command. This mechanism is automatically registered when the tool opens a model in a given repository. To revert this change leave the [merge "mergecsvwithuuid"] section in .git/config in place but revert the association of *.csv with this merge in .git/info/attributes So long as the .git/config stanza remains in place the automatic configuration will not be reattempted.
- Configuration Management is the process of reviewing and approving changes controlled within a version control system. Support for comparing with past versions and with alternative branches is included in the system. No specific workflow for approvals or for maintaining the current configuaration register is presently imposed. If you are performing full configuration management in conjunction with the tool and think there are simple things the tool can do to simplify this task please let me know.
Legal:
- The software itself follows the UNLICENCE (public domain)
- The software relies on dependencies that each have their own licence. If in any doubt please consult the legal documentation for each dependency. Dependencies are listed in the pom.xml file in the source tree.
- The generic binary distribution includes depedancy binaries drawn from maven central. The debian package is built for Ubuntu 15.04 and does not include dependencies.
Development status: Very early