Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) has become essential for developing increasingly complex systems. Methods such as Arcadia and tools like Capella provide a structured way to capture requirements, define architectures, and ensure consistency throughout the engineering lifecycle. However, while these models are invaluable for system architects, they often remain difficult to understand for other stakeholders, including project managers, requirements engineers, safety specialists, and verification teams.
MBSE Vision 360 was developed to bridge this gap. Rather than replacing Capella, it provides an intuitive visualization and analysis environment that enables both experts and non-specialists to explore and understand MBSE models.
The webinar highlighted three major challenges facing systems engineering teams.
The first is the growing complexity of modern systems, where numerous components and dependencies make architectures increasingly difficult to understand. The second is the persistence of organizational silos. Although many disciplines contribute to system development, they often work with different tools and perspectives, making collaboration more difficult. Finally, engineering teams need to detect inconsistencies and traceability gaps as early as possible to reduce development risks and avoid costly corrections later in the project.
MBSE Vision 360 aims to address these challenges by making architecture information more accessible, understandable, and easier to review.
MBSE Vision 360 is a standalone Capella model viewer that reads existing models without modifying them or requiring Capella to be installed on users' workstations. Built on the Capella metamodel and the Requirements viewpoint plugin, it extracts model information and presents it through an interactive interface designed for both technical and non-technical users.
The solution pursues two complementary objectives: democratizing access to MBSE models across the project team and providing advanced review capabilities for system architects.
The application offers several visualization modes to simplify the exploration of complex architectures.
An interactive 3D model explorer provides a high-level overview of the architecture, allowing users to search for model elements, inspect their properties, and better understand Arcadia concepts through contextual explanations.
Hierarchical breakdown structure views automatically display the decomposition of functions, components, or other model elements across the different architecture layers, helping users understand how the system is progressively refined.
To support collaboration and design reviews, MBSE Vision 360 includes traceability views that visualize relationships between requirements and architecture layers, as well as impact analysis capabilities to identify the elements affected by a potential change.
For advanced users, a configurable query builder makes it possible to identify missing allocations, incomplete descriptions, or other modeling issues based on project-specific review rules. The tool also introduces experimental visualizations, including functional chain analysis and N² matrices, to evaluate interface complexity and identify tightly coupled components that could affect system modularity.
The webinar demonstrated these capabilities using the open-source AIDA (Aircraft Inspection by Drone Assistant Mission) Capella model developed by IRT Saint-Exupéry.
The demonstration showed how users can navigate through the architecture, explore traceability across Arcadia layers, review functional allocations, and execute custom queries to assess model quality. By combining intuitive visualizations with powerful analysis capabilities, MBSE Vision 360 enables both newcomers and experienced architects to gain a clearer understanding of complex system models.
MBSE Vision 360 is currently a proof of concept developed in collaboration with industrial partners. Future enhancements include historical KPI monitoring through model snapshots, guided review workflows with comments and approvals, Interface Control Document (ICD) generation, support for SysML and SysML v2 models, multi-model navigation, architecture comparison, and trade-off analysis. These developments will continue to evolve based on customer feedback and emerging industrial needs.