What are ADF files?

ADF is the file extension of the ARIS Document Format file format. ARIS Express saves your models in this file format. You can import the models and process them. You can consolidate the objects into existing objects or you can select an existing object when assigning a name.

Consolidate

ARIS Express models do not use occurrence copies. You can use consolidation to merge objects from ARIS Express models with database objects so that, for example, the Plant 1 organizational unit in the ARIS Express model corresponds to the Plant 1 organizational unit in the database because it is actually the same plant. You can therefore create one object from two or more objects. All object symbols then refer to the same object. As you can see from the above example involving the Plant 1 organizational unit, this is particularly useful if, for example, you want to use reports to evaluate models. The report can then assign all functions carried out in Plant 1 to this organizational unit.

Select existing objects

However, you can also enter two or more letters and click Browse for definition selection. This is displayed when editing placed object names in open models. If you select one of the objects found, the object just placed in the model will be an occurrence copy of the selected object from now on.

Find objects with identical names

You can search the database for objects with identical names and then check whether the database already contains objects whose names are identical to the imported objects. However, you can use additional attributes and link them using AND and OR to determine whether there are any matching objects. You can start consolidation directly for selected objects in the result list.