IBM Rational Rhapsody Design Manager 6.0.3 and IBM Rational Rhapsody 8.2 are here! As usual, there are many exciting things that have taken place in the area of modeling, or as many call it today, architecture and design management. For a complete list, see the New & Noteworthy for Rhapsody Design Manager and what’s new for Rhapsody.

To align our journey with yours, we have used “engineering efficiency” as a guiding star, and one of the roads leading us there is usability. With an increased focus on simplicity and usability, we have been taking leaps in this area over a number of releases, enabling engineers using Rhapsody and Rhapsody Design Manager to become more productive than ever.

Rational Rhapsody 8.2

In the Rhapsody 8.1.4 release, we made it possible to create role-based simplified tool skins that remove options from menus and tool bars. With 8.1.5, we enhanced the use of tables and harmonized the user interface, among other things.

With Rhapsody 8.2, our journey continues. We have made significant improvements to the following:

• Diagrams
  • Improved Rectilinear line routing
  • Drawing guides (snap to objects)
  • Easier, more consistent navigation

• More consistent and easier searching in Views (Diagram, Table, and Matrix)
• Automatic allocation from Swimlanes in the Activity Diagram
• Direct integration with the IBM Rational Team Concert SCM to ease the configuration management workflow
• Round tripping with  Dynamic Model Code Associativity (DMCA) now takes advantage of the extra memory available on 64-bit workstations
• SysML alignment and usability
  • Metamodel cleanup and usability enhancements, for example, we added the new term Value Property (Attribute)
  • Activity diagram, for example we improved Inferred Allocations to automatically manage “Allocate” relations under a swimlane
  • Sequence diagram/timing diagram enhancements
    • Traceability to all model elements

Rhapsody Design Manager 6.0.3

For Rhapsody Design Manager 6.0.3, we have also made some great improvements. For example, we focused on simplifying requirements traceability for the end user and now allow navigation from the DM web to the Rhapsody client.

Improvements have been done in and around the following:

• Tech preview: Report on design information with Jazz Reporting Service
• Actively managed mode completions and usability
  • Complete references view, Lock on modification
  • Active change-set selection, better profiles management
• Configuration Management
  
  • Show version number of artifacts
  • Ability to revert back several change sets
• Improvements to requirements using OSLC traceability
  
  • Navigation from DM Web and OSCL preview to Rhapsody client

I hope you take the opportunity to try this release and consider how these improvements can help you in the quest for increased engineering productivity. We are, of course, also interested in your feedback as we prioritize future improvements.

Rhapsody and Rhapsody Design Manager are associated with the IoT continuous engineering  solution. New users can try Rhapsody Design Manager on the cloud by going to the product cloud trial.  To download and install Rhapsody Design Manager, go to product download.

To understand more about Rhapsody Design Manager and Rhapsody, I would also recommend taking a look at “10 Tips to Make you More effective with Rhapsody.”

Also, be sure to sign up for our Enlightenment Series!

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