ArchiMate provides a notation and a metamodel for capturing the Enterprise Architecture of an organization. It also suggests Viewpoints to display or build that information.
System Architect’s support for ArchiMate provides:
•Data centric support for the Archimate 3.0 metamodel; all information visualized reflects the underlying model.
•Symbols that support the ArchiMate notation, provided on the Draw menu of each diagram type.
•A definition type for each ArchiMate element (see ArchiMate elements) with inheritance of metamodel behavior between certain element types as dictated by the ArchiMate specification.
•Reports and suggested additions to the ArchiMate core metamodel provided as add-in packages on the System Architect support center.
How to build ArchiMate models
When building an ArchiMate model, you should keep the following in mind:
•The diagram type (Viewpoint) that an element and its relationship can be (and is intended to be) visualized on. The System Architect help provides:
•A page for each element type (see ArchiMate elements), and specifies what Viewpoint it can be shown on.
•A page for each Viewpoint (see ArchiMate’s Viewpoints), and specifies what can be visualized on it (with examples), and in some cases (such as Capability Maps) how to build it.
•The relationship type you can use to directly relate two elements. ArchiMate provides tables of what relationship types can be formed between elements – see Allowed relationships between model elements.