Modelling
One model, many views
Archibara keeps one model of your architecture and draws it in as many views as you need, each with its own layout.
The model and its views
The model holds your objects, their connections, records and catalogs. A view decides which of those objects appear in one diagram, where their cards sit, how big they are, which groups frame them and how each connection is drawn there.
Because the layout belongs to the view, moving a card never changes the architecture, and the same object can appear in many views without being copied. Rename an object or change its technology once, and every view that shows it is up to date.
Remove, hide or delete
Right-click a card to see the difference:
- Hide from this view keeps the card's place in the view but stops drawing it. To bring it back, press Ctrl+K, find the object and choose Show in this view.
- Remove from this view takes the card off this view. The object stays in the model and in every other view.
- Delete from model deletes the object everywhere, together with its children and their connections.
Pressing Delete or Backspace removes the selected cards from the current view only. Selected connections, however, are deleted from the model. Every one of these actions can be undone.
View kinds
| Kind | Use it for | Types you can add on the canvas |
|---|---|---|
| Landscape | The big picture: all your systems and the people around them | System, Actor, Group |
| System context | One system and its direct surroundings | System, Actor, Group |
| Container | The inside of one software system | System, Actor, Group, App, Store |
| Component | The inside of one container | All types |
| Deployment | Where containers and systems run | All types |
| Custom | Any other diagram | All types |
Create a view
- Open the Views tab in the explorer and select the plus button (New view), or open the view menu in the toolbar and select New view.
- Enter a Name and choose a Kind.
- Optionally choose a Scope element: the software system or container whose inside this view shows.
- Under Start with, choose An empty view or All elements. With a scope element, All elements means everything inside that element.
- Select Create. A new view is arranged automatically.
A workspace without any view shows New view in the middle of the canvas. Objects you add while no view exists are stored in the model only.
To rename a view, select an empty part of the canvas and edit View name in the inspector. To delete a view, hover it in the Views tab and select its delete icon. Deleting a view removes only the view and its layout; the model is untouched.
Detail views
A detail view shows the inside of an object, one level down:
- A Software system opens into a Container view scoped to it.
- A Container opens into a Component view scoped to it.
Double-click a system or container, or right-click it and select Open details, to open its default detail view. If it has several, Archibara asks which one to open. If it has none, it offers Create detail view; leave Include children and connected context selected to start with the object's children and the objects they connect to, or clear it to start empty.
The lens in the corner of a card shows how many detail views the object has. Rest the pointer on it to list them under Detail views of the object. From there you can open any of them, choose Set as default in a view's menu, or add another one with New detail view.
On a detail view, Back above the canvas, or the lens that returns to the level above, takes you back to where you came from, with the same position and selection. Viewers can open existing detail views; creating one needs Editor access.
Show an existing object on another view
Any of these adds an object that is already in the model, rather than a copy:
- Double-click the canvas and pick it under Existing objects.
- In the explorer's Model tab, find it in the Element library and select Add to view, or drag it onto the canvas.
- Press Ctrl+K, search for it and choose Add to this view, or Show in this view if it is hidden there.
Duplicate, copy and paste work differently: they create new objects named with "copy", which you can then change independently.
Frames, groups and view settings
When a view shows objects without their parent, the parent is drawn as a frame around them, for example a system around its containers. Groups are frames you add yourself (press 3, or pick Group in Add object). A group belongs to that one view; select it to set its Boundary type, Exposure and Boundary layer, and use Elements in this boundary to choose its members.
Select an empty part of the canvas to see the view's settings in the inspector:
- Display: Show full titles, Show descriptions, Show boundaries and Show relationship labels.
- Layout: Layout direction (Left → Right or Top → Bottom), Layout algorithm, Connector style and Boundary layer.
Auto layout
Select Auto layout in the toolbar to arrange the current view with its layout algorithm. The arrow next to it chooses another one: Hierarchical (default), Network, Radial or Compact grid. With Radial, a selected object becomes the centre. Like every change, an auto layout can be undone.
Explore the whole model
The Open model browser button near the top of the Model tab opens Model, a workspace-wide view of every object:
- Table lists objects with search, filters (technology, status, team, tags, type, diagram, description and domain) and sorting. You can edit names, teams and technology text in place, select many objects and change them together, and download the filtered list with Export filtered objects (CSV).
- Grid · read only shows objects as cards; choose one to see its connections and the diagrams that contain it.
- Catalogs manages tags, technologies and domains; see Domains, tags and technologies.
- Connections lists and edits connections across the workspace.
Dependencies, at the top of the same dialog, follows connections from a Start object, Outgoing, Incoming or Both directions, up to a Maximum hops you choose, and shows the shortest distance to each object it reaches. It never changes the model.
Records
The Presales tab in the explorer keeps records that are not diagram objects: Assumption, Risk, Unknown, Requirement, Decision and Note. Each has a Status (Open, Confirmed, Resolved or Rejected), an optional Severity, Markdown Details and Linked elements: the objects it concerns. Decisions, requirements and risks offer templates, such as an ADR template for decisions. The statuses are labels for your process; they do not lock a record. Records can be added to Markdown and HTML reports when you export.
Deployment
To show where software runs, create a Deployment view, add an object and set its kind to Deployment node or Infrastructure node. Then open Instances on the Views tab and select New instance to deploy a container or system to a host in an environment, with a replica count. Connections between instances in the same environment are drawn automatically from the logical model.