CelinQ Insights · No. 90 · Last technically reviewed: August 2026
How to Generate Documentation From Archi
Archi is a genuinely good modelling tool with no built-in answer to "how do I turn this into something a non-architect can browse."
Short answer. Archi's own export options are image and report exports — useful for a one-off diagram or PDF, not a living, searchable portal. jArchi scripting can automate some of this but requires someone to build and maintain the script. Once an Archi model is part of a CelinQ workspace, the same static-site documentation generator that already serves Sparx EA works on Archi-sourced content too, because it generates from the canonical workspace, not from either tool's native file format.
What Archi offers natively
Archi ships genuinely useful export capabilities for what they're designed for. A diagram can be exported as an image (PNG, JPEG, SVG) for dropping into a slide deck or a document. Archi's model report generator can produce an HTML or CSV summary of the model's structure. jArchi, Archi's scripting engine, can automate bulk export tasks if someone is willing to write and maintain the script.
None of these amount to what a stakeholder-facing documentation portal actually needs: a searchable index across the whole model, one browsable page per package or diagram with the diagram rendered inline and linked to related elements, and — critically — some way to know later whether the export still reflects the current model. Archi's native tools answer "get me a picture of this diagram" well. They don't answer "give my whole organisation a living way to browse this architecture" at all.
What a real documentation portal needs
Full-text search across the model
Finding "the payments application" shouldn't require knowing which package it lives in.
Linked, not just listed
A reader following a relationship from one element to another should be one click away, the way the model itself works.
Traceable to a model revision
Knowing which version of the model a page reflects — and whether that's still current — is what separates documentation from a snapshot.
How this works once Archi is part of a CelinQ workspace
CelinQ's documentation generator does not read Archi's or Enterprise Architect's native file format at all — it generates from CelinQ's own canonical workspace model, the same shared representation both tools synchronise into. That is a specific, deliberate architectural choice, not an incidental detail: because the generator was never written against either tool's file format, it did not need a single line changed to work on Archi-sourced content once Archi became a second client. An Archi-only workspace, an EA-only workspace, and a mixed workspace with both all produce the same kind of searchable, linked static portal — a landing page, full-text search, and a page per package and per diagram, diagrams rendered inline.
For an Archi team specifically, this means the model can stay exactly where it already is — local .archimate files, synchronised through CelinQ's Archi plugin — while stakeholders who have never opened Archi get a genuinely browsable view of it, without anyone maintaining a parallel manual export process. The same continuous-documentation staleness detection described here applies identically, regardless of which tool the underlying model content came from.
Honest scope. This requires the Archi model to already be synchronising into a CelinQ workspace — it is not a standalone documentation tool for Archi on its own. For a team not otherwise using CelinQ for collaboration, Archi's native model report export or a jArchi script remains the lighter-weight option for occasional, one-off documentation needs.
Frequently asked questions
Does documentation generation require Enterprise Architect to also be in the workspace? No — an Archi-only workspace generates documentation the same way a mixed or EA-only workspace does.
Can I publish Archi documentation to SharePoint? Yes — the same four publish destinations (local folder, zip, SharePoint, SFTP) are available regardless of which tool the model content came from.
Is this different from Archi's own model report export? Yes — Archi's native report is a point-in-time HTML/CSV export with no search index, no staleness awareness, and no revision tracking. This is a generated, searchable, linked portal tied to a specific workspace revision.
Related reading
How to Keep Architecture Documentation Up to Date
Why documentation goes stale, and what continuous documentation actually does about it.
Documentation
The full product page: what's generated, where it publishes, and what's not built yet.