Sirius 3.0: Faster, Stronger and Smarter Diagram Editors

Eclipse Mars, this year’s new platform version, has well and truly arrived! Included in the release you will find Sirius 3.0, the latest version of the solution that allows you to create a custom and dedicated graphical modeling tool.

What is Sirius?

Sirius is the Eclipse project to easily create a customized modeling workbench. Dedicated to your area of expertise and supporting your design concepts, it allows you to graphically design complex systems (IT software, business activities, physics, etc.) while keeping the corresponding data consistent (architecture, component properties, etc.).

A modeling workbench created with Sirius comprises a set of Eclipse editors (diagrams, tables and trees) that allow you to create, edit and visualize EMF models.

Whether you are an IT Architect or Developer, a Tools and Methods Manager, or an Embedded Software or Systems Engineer, you are called upon daily to devise and design innovative solutions in complex environments. With Sirius, you can create an efficient graphical tool to describe your design choices and define your architecture.

Sirius 3.0: robust, fast, and a great user experience

Since Sirius 1.0, released June 2014, many efforts were made on the performance and scalability. With this new version, Sirius takes robustness to another level. This technology is more than capable of handling intensive use thanks to testing scenarios that can handle up to 1 million elements! Even with your most limited scenarios, you will experience the difference: a lower memory footprint, faster refresh times, lower latencies with high volume models, etc.

User experience is extremely important for us and it is no different with this latest version. Some basic behaviour inherited from GMF Runtime were changed to better fit user needs. For example, the new behavior for Resizing a container:

New behavior for Positioning things:

• Snap To Shape enabled by default for new diagrams
• Snap To Grid now used when an element is created
• Resize no longer change ports or children's location
• Actions to distribute shapes
• Action to reset the diagram origin

Diagram Editing

Sirius 3.0 also brings many ergonomic improvements for diagram editing:

Anchor on borders

Now the edges are linked closely to the images. You only need to use images with a transparent background.

Underlined and strikethrough

In the Appearance tab, in addition to Bold and Italic, it is now possible to set the font formatting style to Underline and Strikethrough.

Compartments

Containers now support vertical and horizontal compartments layout, thanks to new possible values for Children Presentation attribute.

The complete list of changes is available here: https://www.eclipse.org/sirius/whatsnew3.html

Concrete examples gallery

If you want to discover concrete examples of how Sirius is used, the Gallery page on the Sirius website is definitely here for you. There, you will find many noteworthy examples that are already implemented.

From the Android applications modeler to a full Systems Engineering workbench, including the configuration of home automation systems, you will discover a wide range of use cases using Sirius in many domains.

Visit the gallery: http://www.eclipse.org/sirius/gallery.html

SiriusCon coming this December!

Launched in 2013, the Sirius project depends on a very active community. After a roadshow in 2014/2015 that took us west to Canada and east to Germany it’s now time for us to organize an international event fully dedicated to Sirius.

SiriusCon is coming to Paris on December 3, 2015 for a full day conference for both users and developers of this technology. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn more about Sirius, its new advanced features as well as user experience feedback.

To stay up to date on the SiriusCon event please subscribe here: http://www.siriuscon.org/