We are proud to announce the release of version 3.1 of our safety modeling tool safeTboxTM. Besides improving safeTbox by fixing some bugs (many thanks to the users that reported issues), in this version, we added the following capabilities:
Modeling capabilities
Table view
Some times the same attribute of multiple elements have to be changed. Instead of changing them one by one, the new table view lets the user list elements within a diagram within a table, where the attributes can be changed at once. The table view can either be opened for diagram, elements, and packages selected within the project browser or for several selected elements within a diagram. To open the table view, open the smart menu and choose Comfort -> Table View.
Within the table view, the user can filter listed elements by their stereotypes or simply exclude single elements and/or their child elements.
To increase the efficiency when changing the same attribute for several elements, the user can select elements by checking the checkbox in the Selected column and edit only one cell. The value is then applied to the cells of all selected elements after the user loses focus on the edited cell. All changes within the table view are marked with a red exclamation mark symbol. Within the review section, the user can inspect the changed elements in the left list and deleted elements in the right list, before applying the changes.
GSN modeling enhancements
In this new safeTbox version we extended the GSN modeling capacity by adding the realization view support to GSN modules. The user can now create several realization views for the same GSN module to create variants. This new feature comes with the possibility to clone a realization view or set a specific realization view as preferred, as known from the component or CFT modeling techniques. Additionally, safeTbox now also supports a drag and drop mechanism for any existing element on GSN diagrams. This does not only allow you to put already modeled GSN elements into a diagram (e.g. use the same elements in a different realization view), but also allows you to link an Enterprise Architect element into the GSN diagram, for instance, to support evidences within a GSN argument explicitly.
Usability capabilities
New smart menu
The new smart menu is now more condensed and actions are now organized in categories that are collapsed by default. The category Visualization is renamed to Appearance and includes new features for applying other elements' appearance.
Quick search
As the model gets bigger, the harder it is to find an already modeled element. With the quick search functionality, the user can search for and navigate to a specific element in the model quickly by typing the stereotype, name, or identifier of the desired element. After typing the first two letters a list containing the matching elements appears, where the user can navigate to the element from the list by double-clicking it.
Show/hide embedded elements
From now on the user can not only hide and show ports of a component but also has the flexibility to show and hide all embedded elements of a container element such as Component Type, CFT, and GSN Module. The action is located under the Comfort category on the smart menu. The action opens a new dialog that lists all hidden and shown elements, where the user can change several elements w.r.t. hiding and showing at once. Thus, the user does not longer has to delete several elements one by one from the diagram or dragging them back into the diagram respectively.
Filter mechanism for the element selection list
The filter mechanism functionality allows users to filter the elements listed in selection dialogs, such as for Excel Exporter, Show/Hide Embedded Elements, Show/Hide Ports, and many more. In order to filter the entries in the chosen dialog, start typing in the filter field. This will automatically display only the entries that contain the typed-in text.
Parent failure view generation
The parent failure view generation functionality helps the user with creating a new CFT for a component already containing sub-components, which have CFTs already created for. After triggering the action for creating a new failure model for the component a new dialog allows the user to choose which realization views of the subcomponents' CFTs shall be included within the parent CFT.
Additionally to creating the CFT instances within the newly created CFT, this functionality also helps the user by trying to connect the CFT instances' failure modes automatically. Therefore, within the next Port Connection Dialog the user can choose between three options how safeTbox shall try to connect the CFT instances' failure modes.
- Best Guess: The input and output failure mode pair names are checked, whether they contain a user-defined number of the same words (Number of repeated words). If so, then the failure mode pairs are connected.
- Conservative: This option ignores the failure modes' names. Instead, it follows the port connections between the sub-components and connects the connected ports' mapped failure modes, accordingly.
- Exact: When choosing this option only those failure modes of different CFT instances are connected that have the exact same name.
Furthermore, the user has the option to let safeTbox check for matching words with case sensitivity or not. The user can also choose if safeTbox shall layout the created diagram.
New shortcuts
Finally, here is a table with all the new shortcuts, we introduced in this version:
| Ctrl + 1 | Show the properties dialog of a selected element |
| Alt + F2 | Rename element quickly |
| Alt + T | Shows the quick search |
| Alt + Arrow | Move a selected element up, down, left, right by 5 pixels |
| Alt + Shift + Arrow | Move a selected element and all embedded elements up, down, left, right by 5 pixels |
| Alt + Ctrl + Arrow | Move a selected element up, down, left, right by 100 pixels |
| Alt + Ctrl + Shift + Arrow | Move a selected element and all embedded elements up, down, left, right by 100 pixels |
| Alt + C | Copy element boundaries |
| Alt + V | Paste element boundaries. I.e. element applies the new boundaries |
| Ctrl + Shift + C | Copy the appearance (colors (background & border), font and any other appearance configuration done within the safeTbox properties dialog/view) of an element |
| Ctrl + Shift + V | Paste the appearance. I.e. element applies new appearance |
| Ctrl + Shift + T | Reopens last closed diagrams |