ORBIT: an environment for component-based heterogeneous design and analysis

The development of large systems relies on the ability to manage complexity throughout the design cycle. Decomposition and component based design contribute substantially to effective design practice. In addition, maintaining heterogeneous models of the system allows separation of concerns; different analysis tools utilize different views of the model to assess the correctness and requirement satisfaction of the design in a complementary fashion. The paper presents a design framework that supports heterogeneous component based analysis and design. The design portion of the framework encapsulates a component such that different representations (including decomposition representations) are associated with each component. Top down and bottom up design as well as component reuse are supported naturally. Using configurations, the design tree is pruned to obtain a specific view of the design for analysis purposes. The analysis model allows composition of analyses to create analysis plans and to use different types of analyses collaboratively. An associated CAD environment provides useful distractions of the framework. The framework can be extended to support any component based design domain.