Workspace editor

The workspace editor allows you to create and modify elements, relationships, views and more.

View and manage the hierarchy of elements that make up the static structure.

View and manage the relationships between elements in the model.

Modify the set of diagrams and their content.

Modify the styles used on your diagrams.

To use the workspace editor, click the label associated with a workspace on your dashboard.

Getting started

Here's a short getting started guide to using the browser-based workspace editor. This is equivalent to the getting started examples for the Structurizr for Java and Structurizr for .NET client libraries. Click a screenshot to enlarge it.

Open the workspace editor for your workspace.

Click on the black circle representing the workspace (in this case, it's labelled "Getting Started"). This will open a modal where we can add a software system or a person. Fill in the name and description fields, and click on the "Add person" button.

This will add a person element to the model, which you can see in the tree structure.

Now repeat the process to create a software system, and click the "Add software system" button.

Now we have two elements in the model; one person, and one software system.

Now click on the "Relationships" tab.

Click once on the person element, and a second time on the software system element. This opens a modal where we can create a relationship between the two elements. Fill in the description field, and click the "Add relationship" button.

This will add a relationship between the two elements in the model, as reflected by the arrow between the nodes.

Now click on the "Views" tab.

Click the "+ System Context View" button. This opens a modal where can can create a System Context view for our software system. Fill in the key (a short identifier for the view), and description fields. Click the "Create" button.

This creates a System Context view, and automatically adds our software system to it.

To add the user to the view, select it in the list (to the left of the diagram editor), and click the "Update" button.

Now we can rearrange the elements by clicking and dragging them around the canvas, or by using the toolbar controls. See Help - Diagram editor for more details.

Click the "Relationships" tab (to the left of the diagram editor).

To add the relationship to the view, select it in the list (to the left of the diagram editor), and click the "Update" button.

Scroll down to see the element and relationship styles defined in the workspace. See Help - Notation to read about how to style elements and relationships.

Click the "+ Element style" button. This will open a modal, where we can choose which tag we'd like to create a style for. Select "Person", and click the "Create" button.

This opens a second modal, where we can define the properties for the element style. Choose a shape (Person), and set the background and text colours. Then click the "Update" button.

The style will be immediately reflected in the diagram editor.

Now repeat the process to create a style for the "Software System" tag.

Now we can make any final layout tweaks, and save the workspace by clicking the "Save workspace" button.

Elements

The "Elements" view provides a visual representation of the people, software systems, containers and components contained within the software architecture model.

Adding an element

To add a person or software system, click the root workspace element. To add a container, click the parent software system element. And to add a component, click the parent container element.

Modifying an element

To modify or delete an element, right-click it to open the properties dialog.

Relationships

The "Relationships" view provides a visual summary of the relationships between all elements in the model. The darker lines indicate more than a single relationship between two elements.

Adding a relationship

To add a new relationship between two elements, click the source element followed by the destination element. This will open the relationship dialog, where you can specify the relationship properties.

Modifying a relationship

To modify or delete a relationship, right-click the element that is the source of the relationship to open the properties dialog.

Decisions

The "Decisions" view provides a visual summary of the decision records in the workspace; allowing you to add, edit and delete decision records.

View and manage the set of decision records contained in the workspace.

Edit individual decision records.

Views

The "Views" view allows you to manage the set of views contained within the software architecture model.

Adding a view

You can use the buttons at the top of the page to add a new System Landscape, System Context, Container, Component, Dynamic or Deployment view. You will be prompted to enter a unique key to identify the view (alphanumeric characters only), and optionally to select the element that should be the scope of the view.

Modifying a view

To modify the set of elements that are shown in the view, select the view in the dropdown list. From here you can modify the set of elements and relationships that can be shown in the view.

The inline diagram editor can be used to modify the layout of the elements and relationships in the view. See Help - Diagram editor for more details.

Deleting a view

To delete a view, click the "Delete" button after selecting the view in the dropdown list.

Styles

You can also modify the styles that affect how elements and relationships are rendered in the diagrams. See Help - Notation for more details on how tagging and styling works.