How diagram templates guide diagram content

Note Microsoft Visio Professional must be installed on your computer. Visio Standard is not supported. Siemens Digital Industries Software assumes that you are familiar with Visio and with XML.

Diagram templates supply the instructions that Systems Engineering uses to generate diagrams of functional and logical architectures. Every diagram is based on a diagram template, which determines the diagram's shapes and their behaviors.

A diagram template relates a Teamcenter stencil (.vsx or .vssx) to a mapping file (.xml):

• The stencil contains the master shapes that represent elements in functional or logical structures.
• The mapping file ties the stencil shapes to Teamcenter object types and properties.

This combination sets up bidirectional interaction between the diagram and Systems Engineering.

Each diagram template designates a Teamcenter application domain for its diagrams. The application domain defines a context for accomplishing particular business tasks with those diagrams. The stencil shapes represent the object types and properties in the domain, and the mapping file contains domain-specific XML entries.

Systems Engineering provides the following application domains by default:

• FunctionalModeling, in which diagrams are fixed to the Function view.
• LogicalModeling, in which diagrams are fixed to the Logical Block view.

Note You cannot change a diagram's template association after the first time you save the diagram.

Diagram templates also specify membership rules and relation rules for diagrams:

• A membership rule lists the object types that can be represented in diagrams based on the template.
• A relation rule lists the General Relationship Management (GRM) relations that can exist among diagram members.