Creating Smart Flows

You can create work flows, such as steps, transitions, and links, using a bespoke set of Home ribbon actions.

Prerequisites

• Configure a Design Abstraction in Capital Project Manager with Type set to Smart Flow.

• Create a design and assign it the design abstraction which has the Type Smart Flow. See Using Designs.

• To use the Add Flow Step from Library action, import the Quick Start Data (which contains a Smart Flows symbols library) or create your own set of symbols for work flows. Note Symbols used to create Smart Flow steps must be created with Symbol Type of Device. See “Creating a New Symbol” in the Capital Symbol Designer User Guide.

Note

Siemens recommends using the quick start data provided, which includes a project template for smart flow authoring, a style set which is essential to see the arrowheads on transitions, and icons / notations over steps where links or footnotes have been added to a step. If you did not load the quick start data when installing Capital, you can import it from the \data\xml folder. Import the \data\xml\Symbol\Smart Flows.xml file into Capital Symbol Designer. See “Importing a Symbol Library” in the Capital Symbol Designer User Guide.

Siemens recommends that you do not create multiple diagrams under the same Smart Flow design. You must always use one diagram to display appropriate information in the Notes table.

Procedure

1. Open the design.A bespoke set of actions is displayed on the Home ribbon. Figure 145: Smart Flow Ribbon The availability of these actions is controlled by the Smart Flow design abstraction Type assigned to the design. See also Using Design Abstractions to Control Ribbon Display.

2. Create your work flow diagram using a combination of steps, transitions, and other actions from the ribbon: Add Flow Step — Steps are used to represent a process, task, or choice block on your work flow diagram. These could include a design or technical publications task, or an input or output of information.

You can click the dropdown menu and choose to add a flow step from the symbol library if you have imported the quick start data (which contains some generic examples) or create your own set of symbols for work flows. Select the required step from the Smart Flows Symbol library and double-click to place it on the diagram. Alternatively, you can draw your step directly on the diagram. Tip Press R when placing the step to toggle its orientation.

							Add
								Transition — Click and drag to create transitions
							between the steps in your work flow. You can also click the dropdown
							menu and select Auto-route
								Transition to enable the system to route the
							transitions between steps automatically.

							Add Link
								— Click to establish links to other flow
							diagrams, local files, online tutorials, or websites using the Add Link Dialog Box.

Table 22: Creating HTML LinksFile Type

Storage Location

Link Type

Comments

HTML

Not relevant

File

Will be part of Smart Flow package (no user action required).

Once created, links are shown on the Links tab in the Design Browser window. Click the icon to open the link, for example, document, related flow, or video file. Click to remove the link from your work flow diagram. Note You can add multiple links to a single step. For example, a single step could contain links to a lower level work flow, a web page, a PDF document containing further information, or a short video illustrating the step details.

							Add
								Footnote — Click to add a footnote to a step on
							your work flow diagram. If you add more than one footnote, they are
							sequentially numbered and appear as footnotes at the bottom of the
							diagram. When you click the action a dialog box opens to set an
							index number for the footnote as well as adding free text.
							Footnotes, once created, display on the Links tab.

							Add
								Description — Click to add a description to the
							step on your work flow diagram. When you click the action a dialog
							box opens to add a free text description to the step, which is
							displayed as a tooltip on the steps when viewed in a browser.
							Descriptions, once created, display on the Links tab.

							Swap
								Direction — Click to select a transition on your
							work flow diagram and change its direction between steps.

3. (Optional) Right-click and select Properties to add properties to the step. These property values can be defined in a dictionary.

4. After you have constructed your work flow using the relevant combination of steps, transitions, and associated links, save the diagram.

5. You can also select Automate

Symbol > Save As Flow Symbol to save a combination of steps and transitions for re-use as pre-defined symbols in the Symbol library.

6. The completed work flow packet is now available for generation and consumption in Capital E/E Publisher.

Parent Topic:

Smart Flows

Capital Logic Designer User Guide, 2512

Unpublished work. © 2025 Siemens