Modeling Nonsoftware Things
构建非软件事物模型
Sometimes, the things you model may never have an analog in software. For example, the people who send invoices and the robots that automatically package orders for shipping from a warehouse might be a part of the workflow you model in a retail system. Your application might not have any software that represents them (unlike customers in the example above, since your system will probably want to maintain information about them).
有时，你构建的事物模型可能从来没有软件模拟．举个例子，发送发票的人和自动从仓库打包并运送订购商品的机器，它们可能是零售系统模型中工作流的一部分．你的应用可能不需要任何软件来表述它们(不像上面例子中的客户，你的系统可能会想要维护他们的信息)．
To model nonsoftware things,
给非软件事物建模，
1.Model the thing you are abstracting as a class.
将抽象的事物以类的形式建模
2.If you want to distinguish these things from the UML’s defined building blocks,create a new building block by using stereotypes to specify these new semantics and to give a distinctive visual cue.
如果你想将这些事物与UML已定义的构建模块区别开来，可以通过使用模式化，创建一个新的构建模块，用来描述这些新的语义和提供一个独特的形象化的记号．
3.If the thing you are modeling is some kind of hardware that itself contains software, consider modeling it as a kind of node as well, so that you can further expand on its structure.
如果你正在建的模型是某类自带有软件的硬件，也许应考虑做为某种节点进行建模，以便你能在它现有结构的基础上进一步扩展．
Note: The UML is mainly intended for modeling software-intensive systems, although, in conjunction with textual hardware modeling
languages, such as VHDL, the UML can be quite expressive for modeling hardware systems. The OMG has also produced a UML extension called SysML intended for systems modeling.
备注：UML最主要的目的是为集成型软件系统进行建模，尽管在与文本型硬件建模语言结合时，如VHDL，UML可以非常富有表现力的建模硬件系统．OMG也产生了一个扩展自UML，被称为SysML，用于系统建模．
As Figure 4-11 shows, it’s perfectly normal to abstract humans (like AccountsReceivableAgent ) and hardware (like Robot ) as classes, because each represents a set of objects with a common structure and a common behavior.
如图4-11显示的，它非常标准地以类的形式抽象出了人(如收账代理人)和硬件(如机器人)，因为它们中的每一个都代表具有共同结构和共同行为的一组对象．
