MacA&D OSX 2.0 - System Models, Time Simulation & Dynamic Charts

June 07, 2006 (PRLEAP.COM) Technology News
Excel Software is now shipping MacA&D OSX 2.0, an engineering tool for system analysis, requirements management, software models, code generation, reengineering and customized project reports. The new release adds system models, time simulation with dynamic charts and graphs to its suite of software engineering capabilities. Other enhancements include team dictionary and requirement documents for concurrent team development, a project scrapbook, flow, store and external entity detail dialogs for structured analysis & design and new project reports.

MacA&D can model and simulate systems driven by cause and affect. Those systems include financial, production, inventory, biological, chemical, thermodynamic and workflow. Systems are modeled as Causal Loop Diagrams with nodes representing system variables and connecting lines representing causal effects. The changing value of each variable causes other variables to change as described by equations. Understanding how a system really works is the first step towards using, improving, automating or explaining it to others.

MacA&D presents an easy, integrated solution to model dynamic systems, parameterize the model with data and equations, run time simulations and present the system behavior with live charts, graphs and tables. Data files can provide input data to models or capture output results. The integrated Data File editor makes it easy to edit data items or import and export data to other applications as a comma or tab delimited file.

The new Project Scrapbook window is a community resource that anyone on the project can concurrently view or edit. It provides a convenient placeholder for project artifacts created from any application. Typical examples include marketing specifications, graphic illustrations, project schedule, software models, tables, graphic charts of simulation results or test plans. Scrapbook items can be organized, copied, pasted, printed or double-clicked to view or edit the original document in its native application.

The MacA&D Developer edition site license adds Team Dictionary and Team Requirements. The Dictionary is a repository of project data. Project requirements and use cases are stored in the Requirements document. Team members can concurrently edit information stored in a shared team document.

The tool includes new project reports and scripting language enhancements. It adds tags for math functions, scrapbook items, dynamic charts and reading or writing of data file variables. Reengineering enhancements help to generate models from code by clustering object classes on diagrams based on selected relationships.

MacA&D OSX 2.0 for Mac OS X computers has a Standard edition at $495 and Developer edition at $1995.

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