The graphical notation for architecture diagrams uses an arrangement of cells to convey many architectural properties and constraints in a highly condensed format:

• Composition is indicated by one or more cells being contained within a parent cell.
• Layering is indicated by the top-down arrangement of cells. Cells should only be used by cells in higher layers (unless specifically allowed or disallowed by a layering override). You can specify that strict layering applies to a diagram - in this case cells should only depend on cells in the next layer, not on cells below that.
• Mapping of each cell in the architecture diagram to actual items in the code-base is specified by 0, 1 or more wild-card expressions.
• Violations of the layering, i.e. dependencies in the mapped physical code-base that break the specified layering, are shown on the diagram (by default, conformant dependencies are not shown).
• Visibility of the layering. By default, cells have public visibility. This means that, normally (in the absence of any explicit overrides), they may only be used by cells that are located higher in the layering. By setting the visibility for a cell to private, access is further restricted such that the cell may only be used by its parent and siblings (analogous to defining e.g. a class method as private). This is useful when you have some logical component and wish to differentiate between its public (e.g. API) and private (e.g. implementation) sub-components.

Diagrams are displayed in the diagram editor where you can perform direct manipulations using mouse actions and the context menu. You also edit diagram and cell properties in the table to the left of the editor.

You can chose to display icons or not. Which icons are used is affected by the global container representation option selected.

You can allow specific upward dependencies between cells with an upward override that will appear green. You can disallow specific downward dependencies with a downward override that will appear red.

You can expand or collapse composite cells by clicking the + or - icons top right of the cell in order to hide or expose detail.

Note: only violations between visible cells are enforced within Structure101 Studio and the companion products (plugins etc.) - if you collapse a cell, any rules implied by its contained cells are not checked.