A trade study or trade-off study is the activity of a multidisciplinary team to identify the most balanced technical solutions among a set of proposed viable solutions." System Engineering Manual, Federal Aviation Administration, 2006.

In this hands-on live tutorial we together with audience architect satellite going through series of systems engineering decisions. In process we emphasize need for architectural trade studies and methodology to accomplish them in SysML. We go through end to end process covering:
* Defining the objectives of the evaluation
* Selecting criteria
* Selecting the solutions to be evaluated
* Delivering expected results, justifications, and recommendations

We discuss possible variability points in system:
*Components variability – selection of a component out of an existing library
*Topological variability – selection of which components are connected to which
*Geometrical variability – selection of specific location for each component
*Relational variability – selection of specific components based on the existence or non-existence of others

We answer trade study specific questions:
*How would I model alternatives?
*Should I modify my design just for the analysis?
*Where parameters values come from?
*Should I keep all alternatives in my model?
*How would I define my custom criteria and evaluation method?
*How would I evaluate my alternative part in the context of full system behavior?
*How would I record evaluation results and document my choice and design decision?

Slides

Sample project files

Video recording of the tutorial

Please visit for more information