Referencing Views

[johmut]

Different Views can obviously re-use (reference) Objects. Can different Views also re-use (reference) Views ?

Connecting Objects on different Archimate layers of a Model, e.g. mapping Application Functions that realize Business Functions, could benefit from referencing a Business- and an Application View on one diagram (View).

I know you can copy/paste both the Business View elements and Application View elements to combine them on a new view (without Viewpoint restrictions) and then add relationships between objects of the two layers. However, when something changes in the layout of, or the elements added to, either of the original Views, the 'combined' view is understandably not automatically updated.

How can I do this ? Dragging the original Views on a new View only results in an rectangle element that does not show the View internals and is thus not fit for my purpose. In large models it is impossible to track what views are based on other views and thus need to be updated in case of changes in the original.

Been there anyone ? Found a way ?
 

[Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie]

Hi,

What you describe would be a bit like layers in Visio or similar tools, but this is not supported by Archi. I've been thinking about it several time but there's a lot of complexity involved and I see no good way to implement it.

The only workaround I see would be to export a view as an image and then use this image as a custom image assigned to the view reference (the object you get when you drag'n drop a view onto another view). This would let you "see" the background view and add elements on top of it, but this won't allow you to create relationships linking elements from both views. A jArchi script could easily be written to refresh the custom image from updated view.

Regards,

JB