Interfacing a Constraint Programming Language with an Existing Electronics CAD Package
Marc van Dongen, James Bowen, Alex Ferguson · 1997
In this note, we report on an ESPRIT-funded project in which we are integrating the Galileo6 constraint language with an electronics design CAD package called Visula. We describe some aspects of the integration and show the functionality of the system, and conclude by discussing our findings. 1 Introduction Increasingly, it is being realised that success in manufacturing requires integration between the various phases of the product life cycle [ Ulrich and Eppinger, 1995 ] . One of the key aspects of this integration is that, during the design of an artifact, due consideration should be given to facilitating the down-stream phases of the life-cycle. This is frequently known as "Design for X" (or DFX), where the X ranges over such issues as manufacturability, servicability and so on. Vendors of leading CAD software have started to incorporate DFX features into their packages. In addition, vendors have discovered from customer feedback that engineering companies require flexibility...