The application of CASE in large aerospace projects

The authors discuss deficiencies of CASE (computer-aided software engineering) for aerospace applications, namely little support for large system development, integrated life-cycle development, and system engineering (including functional allocation to hardware and software as well as system specification traceability). They first review components of 'ideal' as well as actual CASE environments and present key selection criteria for such an environment. Presently no CASE product supports all facets of aerospace applications; an interim solution is to combine separate CASE tools for selected areas and/or customize existing CASE products to meet customer or company specified requirements. The authors present an example of customizing a commercial CASE tool to create hardware block diagrams, specification traceability, and specialized reports. The example application involved the customization of Excelerator, a CASE product from Index Technology, so as to incorporate hardware allocation in system engineering requirement analysis.<>