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 the following:
▪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.