Fan Tutorial 3a - Verify System - V&V Module

This part of the tutorial will discuss how to conduct Verifications and Validations (V&V) activities using the Requirements and Systems Portal. In our previous tutorials, we created Requirements and Blocks for our ValiFan project (Specify Product and Design System). This tutorial will explain how:

• How to create V&V Activities

• How to link V&V Activities to Requirements

• How to run an Activity

• Demonstrate the automatic verification methods in the Requirements and Systems Portal.

Before we begin, let's review the basics of Verification & Validation in the Requirements and Systems Portal. Requirements are connected to one or more systems, or subsystems. These systems are verified using V&V Activities. A Block's requirement can be verified with single or multiple V&V Activities. Each Activity can be linked to one or several Requirements and can verify one or more Systems.

(1) Creating and Loading Views for Verification

The Requirements and Systems Portal offers various pre-selected attributes, such as Identifier, Text, Parents, Children, Type, State, V&V Status, V&V Activities, V&V Blocks, Tags, and Properties. However, this may lead to excessive horizontal scrolling on smaller screens. Users can generate custom views with only the essential attributes to streamline the Verification process. Let's create a new view for the Verification and load it.

• Hover over any one of the attribute name cells. A new icon shows, as shown in the image below. Click on the icon to open the menu.

• Once you click on the icon, you have a new dialog box, Select the last icon with three vertical windows.

• In this box, unselect all the attributes and select only the following attributes: Text, Parents, Children, Applicable Blocks, V&V status, V&V Activities, V&V rules and Tags.

• Upon finishing, right-click on the tables to open the tables menu. In the dialog box, select Save View.

Save View - By saving a View all selected columns, column widths and applied Filters will be saved in a dedicated View.

• A new dialogue box opens where you can input “Verification_View” in Save as new(1), select Private(2), and then click Save(3).

• Once the view is saved, the user can now load them by right-clicking on the tables, selecting the option Load View and selecting the Verification_Views.

(2) Adding a Verification & Validation Activity to a Requirement

The Requirements and Systems Portal offers three columns dedicated to the Verification and Validation of Requirements (apart from additional columns like Compliance and Compliance Comment or even Custom Columns related to verification activities):

• V&V Status (Indicates the overall status of Verification of the Requirement)

• V&V Activities (Displays the associated V&V Activities to the Requirement)

• V&V Rules (Automatic Verification based on Vali comparison between Requirement and System Design Module)

Please search for these columns and arrange them so you will see the following in your Requirements Table.

Necessary columns for Verification and Validation

Now, let’s head over to the “Verifications & Validations Module” to set up a new “V&V Activity”. For this, click on the corresponding module icon in your left sidebar (1) and then select “+ V&V Activity“ (2).

The Verifications and Validations Module

After this, in the pop-up box that opens, let’s define a simple Mass Inspection Activity.

After clicking on “Create“, the Activity is created. Now, we are going to link this Mass Inspection Activity to one of our Requirements from the Requirements Module:

• Click on the name of the activity “Mass Inspection” in the “Name” column.

• Select the “Requirements Statuses“ tab on the top.

• Click on the button entitled “Link Requirement“.

• In the pop-up box, expand the Requirement list and search for “R-Fan-001” and select it.

• Additionally, expand the Block's list and associate the “Fan“ system.

• Finish the linking of those elements by clicking “Add“.

• The Requirement will appear as an entry in the table.

• For this go into the “Status“ column and double-click on “Not Set“, and select “Verified“ in the dropdown.

Please check out the video below to get an overview of these steps.

With this, we have successfully created a manual verification Activity. Let us now look at how to have automatic Verifications on our Requirements that check System Design Valis against Requirement Valis.

(3) Automatic Verification Method through Rules

Most technical developments are designed against strict requirements, e.g., mass, power consumption, budget, etc. The Requirements and Systems Portal maintains a complete overview of whether your design fulfils all of these technical parameters.

In this part, we are going to focus on the “V&V Rules” column. Please arrange your columns in the Requirements Module so they look like the following Figure.

Before defining the rule, please check the name of the 300 g Vali in your Requirement R-Fan-001 by hovering over the Vali like this:

Obtaining information on a Vali in a Requirement.

Now, double click into the “V&V Rules” cell of the Requirement R-Fan-001. This will open up a pop-up window where you can define the Rules.

Here, we can define a rule to compare our Requirement Valifan Mass of 300 g with the Mass Vali of the Fan System from the System Design Module. Use the dollar sign ($) to reference the Valis. In the box that opens, you can search for Valis by typing their names. We are setting up the following relationship:

$Fan.Mass < $R-Fan_001.R_Fan_001_vali

This Rule compares the System Design Mass with the Vali from our Requirement.

Note how the Requirements and Systems Portal already fetches the real associated values below the Rule box.

After clicking “Create“, then “Save“, and then close the window. You will see that we now have one Rule (which is verified) associated with the Requirement and a total of 2/2 V&V Status (since the Mass Inspection Activity has also been verified previously).

Next Steps?

Congratulations, you now know your way around the Requirements and Systems Portal!

You can continue improving your Desktop Fan project. Here are some ideas:

• Add Compliance to your requirements

• Add a few parent/children relationships between requirements, check the Connections Graph, and notice the colour codes on the requirement.

• Right-click on the Requirement Table and explore the “Views“ options as well as the Export options.