About Interfaces, Ports and Flow Associations

In the creation process, interfaces, logical ports and functional ports (also called flow associations) are entities that expose the status of the process purpose and its connections.

Important: By default, when creating a connection between two functions or two logical components, two interfaces are created. This connecting entity is recommended.

However, you can still use ports (for logical components) or flow association (for functions), and connect them with MUX/DEMUX

This page discusses:

See Also
About Functional Connections
About Logical Connections

Interfaces (Functions and Logical Components)

Functional and Logical interfaces improve the connections between functional instances or between logical instances.

They provide the following enhancements:

  • Creation of a flow/type exposition instance which contains flow/type attributes and direction
  • Connection between subflows/subtypes without using a MUX/DEMUX
  • Connection interchangeability thanks to the introduction of the Identifier

    This new attribute identifies the usage of an interface and gives stability to the objects identification, especially in the replace/reroute scenarios.

In the 2D graph, a functional or logical interface has the same 2D representation as a functional/logical port. Moreover, the two connecting objects are compatible: you can connect a port with an interface.

Ports (Logical Component)

A logical port is an entity exposing the different data manipulated by a logical component.

A port can have four directions: In, Out, In/Out or No Direction:

  • In: during execution, signal is received by the logical component.
  • Out: during execution, signal is emitted by the logical component.
  • In/Out: during execution, signal can be emitted and received by the logical component.
  • No Direction: In that case, the port exposes a variable.

    The connection of such port to another port (also without direction) models a mathematical equality between exposed variable.

See Creating Logical Port

Flow Association (Functions)

A functional port (also called flow association) is used to specify the inputs and outputs of a function.

A flow is the data or the service that a functional instance emits or consumes. It can be consumed by one or several functions. There are two categories of flow:

  • Data - This flow models the data exchange.
  • Control - This flow models the activation/deactivation of functions.

Interfaces and Ports Position

When creating a new interface or port, its position is defined at the functional or logical reference. When instantiating a reference, the instance inherits the interface or port position as defined in the reference.

After creation, you can move these interfaces or ports independently in the reference and in any instance.

By default, such modification is not propagated. Two commands are available to let you propagate manually the ports position:

  • from instance to reference
  • from reference to instances

See Propagating Position Between Reference and Instance.

Interfaces and Ports Display

Functional and logical ports
When flying over a port with the pointer on interfaces, functional ports (i.e. flow associations), logical ports, MUX/DEMUX ports, a tooltip displays the root and first level of the type/flow hierarchy.
Symbol and text size
The size of the 2D symbol is proportionate to the size of the text displayed in the interface or port, even if the text is hidden.

Order Management

In Me > Preferences > App Preferences > 3D Modeling > Systems Architecture > Functional & Logical Design > Tree, the Group per direction option allows you to sort the function or logical ports and interfaces. For more information, see Native Apps Preferences Guide: Tree.

To sort function or logical ports and interfaces in alphabetical order, select Display the tree alphabetically in Me > Preferences > App Preferences > 3D Modeling > Systems Architecture > Functional & Logical Design > General. If this option is not selected, they are sorted according to their creation date. For more information, see Native Apps Preferences Guide: General.

Note: In Interface Decomposition Panel, the list of interfaces are displayed according to the selected options.