Visual Architecture Guide

This guide provides clear, visual explanations of BERT's architecture using simple diagrams. Whether you're a developer getting started or trying to understand how the pieces fit together, these diagrams will help you quickly grasp the system design.

🏗️ High-Level Architecture Overview

BERT's architecture consists of five main layers that work together to provide real-time system modeling:

What this shows: The five main components of BERT and how they interact. The Bevy ECS engine sits at the center, coordinating between the user interface, data storage, and business logic.

Key insight: Unlike traditional web applications, BERT uses a game engine (Bevy) for real-time rendering and interaction management.

🔄 Data Flow Architecture

This diagram shows how information flows through BERT from user input to visual output:

What this shows: How user interactions flow through the system to create and modify system models in real-time.

Key insight: The event system acts as a bridge between the UI and the core engine, enabling reactive updates across the entire application.

🌐 Hybrid Deployment Architecture

BERT runs identically in web browsers and as a desktop application:

What this shows: How BERT maintains feature parity between web and desktop environments using a single codebase.

Key insight: The same core application runs in both contexts, with platform-specific adapters handling differences in file access and native integration.

🔗 Component Interaction Lifecycle

This diagram illustrates how flows (connections) are created between system elements:

What this shows: The four-stage process for creating connections between system elements, and how the system handles entity removal.

Key insight: BERT uses a component-based state machine to manage complex interaction workflows, automatically recovering from entity deletions.

🧬 System Language Implementation

This shows how BERT implements systems science theory through modern technology:

What this shows: How theoretical systems science concepts are translated into practical software components.

Key insight: BERT bridges the gap between abstract theory and concrete implementation, making systems science accessible through visual, interactive tools.

🎯 Quick Reference

For New Users: Start with the High-Level Architecture to understand the main components.

For Developers: Focus on the Data Flow and Component Interaction diagrams to understand how the system works internally.

For Researchers: The System Language Implementation diagram shows how BERT translates theory into practice.

For Platform Questions: The Hybrid Deployment diagram explains web vs. desktop differences.

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💡 Next Steps: Ready to dive deeper? Check out the detailed architecture documentation or explore the component definitions in the codebase.