Modeling Guidance

If a solution is already loaded in Visual Studio, Modeling Guidance can be invoked as a menu choice in the Spec Explorer menu available on the Visual Studio menu bar. When chosen, Spec Explorer Modeling Guidance appears as a left pane of Visual Studio. It provides check lists for authoring a model and includes detailed descriptions of the steps. Some steps contain links that launch an interactive procedure that requests additional information and automatically performs a modeling task based on the choices made.

Creating a New Model Using Modeling Guidance

The Spec Explorer Model Wizard can be used to create a new Spec Explorer solution with skeletal model projects that can be further defined using modeling guidance, as follows:

  1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Project. Alternately, after starting Visual Studio, you can click New Project on the Start Page.

  2. In the New Project dialog, under Installed Templates, select Spec Explorer Model in the Test category under Visual C#.

  3. Enter a project Name, Location, and Solution name if you want values for these that are different from the defaults provided.

  4. If you want the new solution in a separate directory then click the Create directory for solution check box.

  5. Click OK. This launches the Spec Explorer Model Wizard.

  6. In the Spec Explorer Model Wizard (Page 1 of 2) dialog, click the radio button for Guided Spec Explorer Model and click Next >.

  7. In the Spec Explorer Model Wizard (Page 2 of 2) dialog, click the Test Suite Project check box if you want the solution to include the test project which contains the test suite that is generated by the new model.

  8. Click Finish. This creates the new solution with skeleton projects. The Spec Explorer Modeling Guidance pane appears on the left in Visual Studio.

  9. In that pane, select the kind of modeling guidance in the Guidance drop-down list. Choose from Author a model from scratch or Test existing implementation.

  10. From this point onward, follow the instructions and suggestions in the check-list steps shown in the Spec Explorer Modeling Guidance pane.

See Also

Concepts

Operating Spec Explorer