While the 26 official ArchiMate viewpoints provide a robust foundation for architectural communication, they are intended as examples and should not constrain modeling activities within an organization. Organizations frequently encounter scenarios where pre-defined viewpoints do not suffice for their unique organizational standards or the highly specific concerns of certain stakeholders. Visual Paradigm addresses this need through a language customization mechanism that allows architects to design user-defined viewpoints, enabling them to select a precise subset of ArchiMate elements and relationships tailored to their domain.
Creating a custom viewpoint involves defining the stakeholders interested in the view and the specific concerns the view intends to address. This mechanism, which aligns with the ISO/IEC 42010 standard, ensures that the resulting architecture view purposefully conveys only the information necessary for a specific argumentation. By using the Manage Viewpoint tool in Visual Paradigm, architects can “whitelist” specific elements from the ArchiMate 3.2 specification—such as restricting a view to only show Business Actors and Application Services—to ensure strict adherence to internal modeling governance.
Applying Custom Viewpoints in Visual Paradigm
To establish a unique organizational standard, architects can follow these steps:
- Navigate to Modeling > Manage Viewpoint from the application toolbar.
- In the Viewpoint tab, click Add to create a new, user-defined viewpoint.
- Specify the intended stakeholders, purpose, and concerns.
- Select the elements and relationships that will be permitted in this viewpoint, effectively creating a custom template for the team.
- Apply the viewpoint to a diagram via the Diagram Specification, which then filters the diagram toolbar to show only the permitted subset of ArchiMate symbols.
Practical Examples of Custom Viewpoints
- Cybersecurity Compliance Viewpoint:
- Need: An organization needs to provide an audit trail for a security department that focuses only on technical constraints and physical storage.
- Custom Setup: The architect creates a viewpoint selecting only Constraints and Requirements from the Motivation layer, and Nodes, Artifacts, and Facilities from the Technology and Physical layers.
- Result: All business processes and application logic are filtered out, leaving a clean, audit-ready diagram that traces security requirements directly to the hardware and data storage nodes where they are realized.
- Legacy Infrastructure Retirement Viewpoint:
- Need: A project manager requires a view that strictly monitors the transition of physical assets during a cloud migration without seeing the software architecture.
- Custom Setup: This viewpoint is configured to only permit Implementation Plateaus, Gaps, and Technology Nodes (devices and system software).
- Result: The diagram becomes a specialized migration roadmap focused purely on the hardware decommissioning timeline, ensuring the facilities team can manage the physical exit of servers without distraction.
- Strategic Asset Management Map:
- Need: The finance department needs to see how high-level resources are distributed across global locations to assess tax implications.
- Custom Setup: A custom viewpoint is defined that allows only Resources from the Strategy layer and Locations.
- Result: This produces a high-level heat map that links the company’s strategic assets (tangible and intangible) to their geographic presence, bypassing the operational layers of business processes and application usage.
