A System Architecture for Modules Supporting Variational Design in Electrical Engineering
B. Dettlaff, Dieter H. Roller, Dirk Schaefer · The University of Bath Online Publications Store (The University of Bath) · 1999
In today’s first and second generation CAD systems for electrical engineering, variational design is supported only in a manual manner, i.e. by copying, modifying and deleting special parts of a design. Next generation E-CAD systems shall support variational design in a fully automatic manner. This can be achieved by using parametric and constrained-based modeling together with configuration and version management tools. This paper presents the overview of an architecture for E-CAD variant modules to be integrated and employed in next generation E-CAD systems. We discuss the parts needed to build up such variant modules as well as the relationships between one part and another. Furthermore, we take into account some aspects of communications management, active knowledge handling and last but not least the graphical user interface. Finally we close with some remarks concerning CORBA, the CAD reference model, and software development in general.