Views

A view is a saved perspective on your architecture: a named configuration of filters, grouping, and selected components that you can return to, share, and point Catio at.

Why views matter

A view is not a bookmark. It is a scoping instrument.

A workspace holds everything Catio has discovered inside its boundary, which is almost always more than any single investigation needs. Filtering the canvas narrows what you are looking at. Saving that filter as a view narrows what Catio reasons about.

That second part is the reason to save a view rather than filter ad hoc each time:

• Views become generation scope: when you generate blueprints or create a plan, the Scope selector offers Full Architecture or any view you have saved. Scoping to a view produces blueprints that address only those components, rather than surfacing findings from unrelated parts of your environment. See Scope.
• Views hold a boundary without splitting the workspace: when the workspace boundary is right but the architecture inside it is broad, a view lets you work on one product, region, or service boundary without creating a second workspace and re-establishing its context.
• Views make an investigation repeatable: the filter set you built to answer a question last quarter is the same one you want when the question comes back. A named view means you rebuild nothing.

When to save a view

Save a view when you expect to come back to the same slice of architecture:

• A recurring investigation: a perspective you rebuild more than once, such as production services only, or everything in one region.
• A team or product boundary: the components one group actually owns, so blueprints generated against it land with the people who can act on them.
• A planning cycle: the area you intend to scope a plan or a generation run to, saved before you start so the scope is explicit rather than remembered.

If you are exploring and do not yet know what you are looking for, filter without saving. Save once the perspective proves useful twice.

Views stay current

Views are automatically updated as integration data is ingested. Once data is ingested and generated, diagrams reflect the latest state, so a saved view shows the architecture as it runs today rather than as it ran when you saved it. What the view holds is the filter, not a snapshot.

In this section

• Open a View: load a saved view from the Views section in Stacks.
• Create a View: filter, add components, and save a named view.
• Edit a View: update filters, components, relationships, and display settings.
• Delete a View: permanently remove a saved view.

For more on diagram components and customization options, see Diagrams.

Next

See saved views used in a real investigation in Using Stacks to Investigate Your Architecture.