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.<>