What is extension

Concept

Enhancement

  • Next Design has an extension mechanism that allows additional features to be plugged in:

    • Model validation
    • Documentation generation
    • Code generation
    • Simulation data generation
    • Data linkage with external tools (import/export)

  • The individual features that can be plugged into Next Design are called extensions. Extensions can implement their own functionality by using the API provided by Next Design from a programming language.

Next Design App Concept

  • By applying the extension mechanism, you can add new UI and profile-specific behaviors to Next Design, which has the flexibility of profile definition. This means that it is possible to realize customized applications according to the target domain on the model-based platform (OS layer) called Next Design.

  • The target domain is not limited to system design and software design, and may be project management or office work. You can freely develop "Next Design apps" that run on Next Design like business apps created on Office tools such as Access, Excel, and Word.

Architecture

UI extension/event extension

  • Functions can be expanded by adding buttons, etc. to the ribbon (menu).
  • You can receive events such as model editing operations and file operations to expand the functionality.
  • Ribbon and event definitions that are extended by the extension are read from the manifest file that is described for each extension (hereafter simply referred to as the manifest).

Switch by profile

  • You can switch the active extension according to the profile of the project, or you can enable multiple extensions for one profile.

Operation by object model

  • You can manipulate Next Design modeling data as an object model from the extension.

Error handling mechanism

  • It provides a mechanism that can output to the error list and display a message at the error point simply by setting the error information for each model as the model verification result.

Multilingual

  • Along with the switching of the display language in the option of Next Design, it provides a multilingual mechanism to switch the display language of the extension.

Selectable implementation method

  • There are two types of extension implementation methods, and you can select each extension.

    • Implementation method using C# script
    • Implementation method to compile .NET DLL from C#

  • You can also add your own input form using the .NET DLL implementation method.

Reference