A part is a "property" of an item in the sense that the part is "owned" by the item, from a configuration management or access rights perspective. If an item is Frozen or Released, its parts cannot be changed. If you delete an item, all its parts are deleted as well. If you do not have change rights for an item, you cannot modify its parts. Because they are such an essential part of the SystemWeaver meta model, they have their own view dedicated to them where you can view all the parts of an item. This way you can check the full content of an item and find out information specific to the parts.


Select the item of interest in the structure and select the Parts view via the Items Ribbon or by selecting it in the View drop-down list. 


Getting Acquainted with the View


The view will display all parts of the item you have selected in the item structure, i.e., one level of the tree, even if the tree itself is configured to not display all. You'll see the following information for each part.


#: Denotes the ordinal number among the parts of the same part type. This is the part order.

Part Name: shows the Partname of each part. If the part name option has not been enabled for a part type (in the meta model of the SystemWeaver database), the column will display the item name instead. Note that the different parts are grouped under the Part type of each part, like the "Design requirements" in the example above.

Type: Lists the item type of each part. (This is actually the DefObj property of the part)

Item Name: Lists the item names of each part. (According to the DefObj property)

Item Version: Lists the item version of each part. (DefObj)

Status: Lists the item version status of each part. (DefObj)

Next Version: Indicates the next version of the item. (the DefObj item)

Error Info: This optional column provides information if a part type has been changed in such a way that it is no longer supported by the meta model. The column is not displayed by default, and can be added by right-clicking on the header row and selecting it.



Examples of Error Info: 


The part type multiplicity has been changed to "Single" and there are multiple occurrences of the part type, (which is no longer supported): 


The part type is no longer supported by the meta model. i.e., part type has been changed/removed: 


The part type is deprecated: 


For Complex Part Types

The most common parts are quite simple; the part is used for representing an "instance" or "link" to an item. Such parts have a DefObj property set to the item. However, if a part also includes a RefObj property, an additional RefObj column will be shown as in the above example. RefObj is a "Referenced Object", and is used, in some cases, to reference a second Item, e.g., in order to describe some kind of mapping between two items in the context of the item owning the part. 


If the RefObj points to an item, then the column includes the item name.


If the RefObj value is missing for such a part, then the corresponding cell will be light yellow (i.e., a part according to a part type that can have a RefObj property).


For parts that cannot have a RefObj value set, the column will be light gray.


Finding Out More

As described in Customizing Grid Views, you can select to display additional properties of parts, by right-clicking on the header row. 


One option that can be useful is the More/Add part attribute column, where you can select to display a specific part attribute in a column, so that you do not need to switch to the Attributes view to see them.


The Expert/Add fields column option, where you specify Field Codes can be useful in special cases:

  • The code SID lists the SystemWeaver type identifier of the part. It can be useful to see the identifier for specific parts when you develop a report template.
  • The code RefObj.Type.Name will list the type name of the RefObj item. 
  • Another useful code is the RefObj.Handle which lists the SystemWeaver IDs of the referenced objects.


The context menu has the following options. 


Removing Part(s): Removes the selected part(s) from the parts list. Batch removal is supported. See Deleting Parts Using the Parts View in Deleting Items and Parts for more information. 


Rename: If activated by an Architect, this option can be used to rename a part. Init Part name resets the selected part name to its item name. See Renaming Parts for more information.


Move here and Renumber: Enable you to quickly move one part or renumber parts of the same part type. See Renumbering of Parts for how these options work.


The Freeze item(s), Thaw item(s) and Release item(s) change the version status of the items of the selected parts (i.e., the DefObj property of the parts).


New version and replace: creates a new version of the selected part's item(s), and use those instead. All properties of the parts, like part attribute values or part names will remain.


Replace to next version: replaces the selected part's items with the next version. All properties of the parts, like part attribute values or part names will remain. This option is available only if there is a next item version.


Replace to any version: opens the Select version/Compare dialog, where you can select the item version to be used for the part. All properties of the parts, like part attribute values or part names will remain. This option is available only if you select a single part.


Open item: opens the item of the selected part in a new tab.


Copy: copies part and item information of the selected part(s) into the clipboard.


Export to Excel

As with most grid views in swExplorer, you can right-click anywhere on the header row and select Export to Excel. The Excel worksheet will include one row per item/part in the order displayed.



Things to Consider

  • It is not always easy to understand exactly what you see in the item structure tree, but technically the top element in the Item structure tree is always a "top node", while any sub-element in the tree will be a node (for structural parts) or just a part (for simple parts). To learn more, see Introduction to the SystemWeaver Meta Model.
  • Note that the Parts view is a generic view which shows the Parts of an item, according to the modeling concepts of SystemWeaver. You may have concepts that resemble these "parts" in a specific meta model, but remember that the "part" concept used here is generic.