It's a new year and time for a new release of Model RealTime. Well, actually two new releases:
Model RealTime 11.3 runs on Eclipse 2022.06 with Java 17 and is now recommended for production use. In addition to core Eclipse improvements in 2022.06 there are also new versions of CDT and EGit with some significant improvements. See the first few slides of the What's New presentation for links to information about all these improvements (they are too many to list here).
There are also a few new Model RealTime specific features present in both releases. Let's take a quick look at some of them.
It's now possible to provide an implementation body for a pure virtual operation using the Code View or Code Editor, and it will be translated to C++ by the Model Compiler. It can sometimes be useful to implement a pure virtual operation since such an implementation can be called from redefining operations.
Most diagrams now have a new "Make Space" tool in the palette. You can use it for moving away symbols and lines from a certain point in a diagram so that you will get room for adding new content there. The symbols will move radially outwards from the clicked point, and you can keep clicking until there is enough free space in the diagram. If necessary the diagram will automatically increase its size to fit the contents.
The appearance of inherited and redefined elements in state machine diagrams have improved. Now such elements are by default drawn with dashed lines. A special style of dashed line is used for redefined elements to make it possible to more easily distinguish them from inherited elements.
The line thickness for inherited and redefined elements is also bigger than before, but there is a new preference RealTime Development - Diagrams - State Chart - Inherited Element Appearance - Line width that you can set to "Small" if you prefer the previous appearance. If you, on the contrary, prefer an even more emphasis on these elements you can set the preference to "Large".
Mattias Mohlin
Architect for IBM Model RealTime