Fan Tutorial 1 - Specify Product - Part 1

Created: January 23, 2025 | Updated: March 14, 2025

In this tutorial, we will go through one of the primary user flows that can get you started using the Requirements and Systems Portal:

Gather and write requirements
Breakdown requirements
Review and improve requirements
Approve and release specifications

The first two aspects, i.e. "Gather and write requirements" and "Breakdown requirements" are covered in Part 1, and the rest in Part 2 of the Specify Product Tutorial. This first tutorial will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. All the values and requirements are arbitrary.

(1) Create a New Project

If you are accessing the Requirements and Systems Portal for the first time, you can skip to the Figure Quickstart Feature.

In the top left corner (see Figure Creating a New Project), click on the project/workspace dropdown menu (1).
Verify that you are in the correct workspace. If you are not, select your workspace from below.

We recommend you to create the tutorial project in the “Training Workspace”. If you are in the default workspace, you can select the “Training Workspace” and create the new project.

In the list of projects, scroll down and select + Create new project (2)

Once you select this option, you will be taken to our “Quickstart” Feature (see Figure Quickstart Feature). Click on the Simple Create option for an “Empty project”

Quickstart Feature - From here, you can create a new project in various ways. For this Tutorial, please select “Simple create“.

Once you click on Simple Create , you will be asked to "Enter a unique (not yet existing) project name" (e.g. ValiFan_yourname) (1) and press Create Project (2). This is also shown in the Figure Setting up a Project Name. In the Project Permissions, you can choose to use the same permissions as the workspace, which mean that the users who have access to the workspace will also have access to the project. You can also set up custom permissions to select the user permissions yourself. For this tutorial, select “Use workspace permissions (Read & Write)” for the Project Permissions.

The project name does not recognize special characters except “_' and “-”. Also spaces are not accepted.

After the project is created, you will automatically see the default “Dashboard”.
Navigate to About (1) in the left navigation panel, and feel free to add information about your project. Here, you can also change the name of your project (2) at any time (see Figure About Project Page).
You can always collapse or expand the main navigation pane by clicking the arrow (3) next to it.

(2) Define Stakeholder Requirements - Import Requirements

Most system design and development follows the V cycle. The first process in a V cycle is understanding the business needs and eliciting the stakeholders' needs. These stakeholder needs are then converted to Stakeholder Requirements. The stakeholder's requirements can be directly created, imported through CSV/XLSX, or even created through the AI-powered “ValiAssistant.” For this section, we will concentrate on the import method.

We have received a file from our stakeholders and will import these requirements.

To do that, download the following CSV file:

Valifan_stakeholder_Requirements.csv

Go to the Requirements Module (see Figure Requirements Module) by clicking on Requirements in the left navigation pane (1)
Upon entering the Requirements Module, click on the Import Requirements (2)

Requirements Module - This is the Requirements Module of the Requirements and Systems Portal. Here, we will upload the Stakeholder Requirements.

Once the option is selected, you can choose a specification or create one directly within the import wizard. We will create the specification within the import wizard (see Figure Import Wizard 1).

Select Create a Specification, type Stakeholder_requirements, and click Continue.

The next step is to upload the CSV so that the import wizard can read and import the file. Once the import is done, you can use a feature called “Valify“, which transforms text-based parameters into references that store the value and the unit, also called Valis. This is shown in the image below.

During the import of requirements, we demonstrated a feature called "Valify." After mapping the attributes and importing the requirements, you have a message screen where you can “Check Now” to use the “Valify” feature.

The “Valify” option lets you convert the numerical values to the requirement valis automatically. Valis are technical parameters of blocks, requirements, or analyses which can be used in calculations and documentation. A vali has a numerical value and contains additional information such as type, unit, formula, description, and minimum/maximum requirements.

You can compare the requirement vali's with the design vali’s in the System Design Module in the future as the project progresses.

(3) Add System Requirements

In a typical system engineering flow, the system's requirements are created with the help of the stakeholder requirements. Most technical developments are designed against strict requirements, e.g. mass, power consumption, and budget. The Requirements and Systems Portal maintains a complete overview of whether your design fulfills all of these requirements.

Now, we will create some system requirements manually (see Figure Creating the Fan Specification)

Click on + Specification (1) and enter Fan_Specs (2) and click Create (3)

Creating the Fan Specification - Manually creating a specification in the Requirements and Systems Portal is easy.

In Figure, Create a new requirement manually, click on Fan_Specs (1). Within this specification, click on Create Requirements(2). Alternatively, you can also click on the blue “Add requirement” button in the upper right-hand corner Add Requirement (3).

In the pop-up menu, verify that you have selected the correct specification. Then, add a unique identifier (1), e.g. R-Fan-001 and type The Mass of the fan shall not exceed 300g under “Requirement text” (2).

Having the tick mark on Check for possible Valis checks for the numeric values within the requirement and converts them directly into valis through the Valify Feature.

Using the same method, but without ticking Check for possible Valis, create another requirement called R-Fan-002 with the requirement text: The Mass of the propeller shall not exceed 50g.

For the second requirement, during the creation, we did not use the “Valify” Feature. In case you do not want to Valify automatically, you have the option to create valis within a requirement manually. Lets see how we can do that.

Creating Requirement Valis within a Requirement

Double-click on the text column of the Requirement R-Fan-002 and delete 50g.
Type $ and a popup showing the list of valis/objects inside the project opens.
On the top right corner of the dialog box, select the + icon to create a Vali.
Input the following details. Name: req_mass_propeller, Formula and unit: 50g and Display unit: g

See how this is done in the click-through below:

Creating a Requirement Vali Manually - Try it out!

Breakdown Requirements with Parent and Child Relationships

Observe the Figure Enable Columns to see how to enable more columns in your requirements table.

Click on column (1) on the right side of the table
Verify that the Parents and Children boxes are checked (2)

Enable Columns - verify if the parents and children columns are checked
In the requirements table, find the second requirement you created (R-Fan-002). In the Parents column, double-click on the cell (1)
In the drop-down menu, type in R-Fan-001 to link both requirements. Note that the children are automatically added to the requirement R-Fan-001
After doing this, your requirements should look like this:

By clicking on the Connections Graph (2 in the Creating parent_child relationship Figure) tab found at the top center of the requirements table, you can see and verify this relationship (see Figure Connection Graph)

Try this : You can generate requirements/breakdown requirements through the ValiAssistant. For example, Click on the ValiAssitant, choose the option Generate Requirements, and type a prompt like Create 2 safety requirements for designing a fan.

Remember that ValiAssistant is powered by an LLM (Large Language Model) and results on the generated requirements may vary.

The steps are shown in the click-through below:

Generating Safety Requirements through the ValiAssistant with a Prompt.

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