An approach to the collection and manipulation of time-based data using the IBM PC and BASICA

With the advent of increasingly integrated, powerful and inexpensive digital electronics, relatively powerful computers have become available to the general public. Along with this technological boom there has been a concomitant increase in the availability of over-the-counter software packages which can be used by research scientists for program development. In the past, the development of computer programs for the collection of large amounts of time-based data was expensive and time consuming; however, the introduction of the current generation of 16-bit microcomputers and associated hardware and software packages has enabled investigators with only a rudimentary knowledge of computers and interfacing to begin to design programs. The schemes and algorithms, developed using BASICA on an IBM-Personal Computer, which are described in this article can serve other investigators as models for the assembly of their own programs for the collection, manipulation and plotting of time-based data. The incorporation of inexpensive computer graphics hardware and software, which provided a simple solution to the problem of analysis and presentation of large amounts of data, will also be discussed.     

Interactive analysis and design of steel frames using the AISC specification

A number of computer programs are available for the analysis of frames and for the design, according to certain codes, of the individual members of such frames. This paper describes the integration of a plane frame analysis program and the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) column design program with interactive computer graphics to provide a complete system for the interactive analysis and design of steel building frames.The user of the program has the option of allowing computer controlled interation between analysis and design to produce a fully stressed design or he may select complete man-machine interaction for control of the analysis-design process. The use of interactive computer graphics displays aids the engineer in interpreting the large bulk of data needed for input and produced by the analysis and design algorithms.     

Urban structures for lower-cost housing projects

The use of computers in the analysis and design of individual structures is known and widely used in practice. There are many operational computer programs such as ICES-STRUDL, ELAS, NASTRAN, WANG, and others which are readily available at the computation centers around the world. These programs are able to perform the analysis, either by direct stiffness method or by finite element technique of various structures and some of these programs will carry the study into complete design. The profession of structural engineering is fortunate to have an access to such a wealthy software library.The theme of this paper is not to deal with any individual computer program applicable to a particular structural unit, but to integrate the analysis and design computer programs with the total analysis and design of a housing project in an urban area. This concept defines an INTEGRATED SYSTEMS APPROACH to total analysis and design. The value of this approach stems from the fact that a structural engineer can not develop an efficient design for a structure in an urban project unless he is fully aware of all pertinent factors which are related to his structural unit. The Integrated Systems Approach will secure an optimum design for the project.Since one of the major concerns of our civilization is the provision of decent lower-cost housing for every citizen, structural engineers need to participate in this great endeavor by extending the application of their technical knowledge to its solution. Due to the size and complexity of the problem, the use of the computers is imperative. The Integrated Systems Approach is defined by a set of individual computer programs linked together. The structural analysis and design programs incorporated in this system use the data generated by the other general project study programs. It is obvious that the structural programs form the major part of the programming system. The Integrated Systems Approach to analysis and design stresses the point that the structural engineer should not consider only the factors for an optimum solution from the points of view of strength, durability and materials used. He has to be aware of other very pertinent socio-economic factors to develop a design to be happily accepted by the public.     

SAPPHIRE: A toolkit for building efficient stream programs for medical video analysis

This paper describes the design and implementation of SAPPHIRE – a novel middleware and software development kit for stream programing on a heterogeneous system of multi-core multi-CPUs with optional hardware accelerators such as graphics processing unit (GPU). A stream program consists of a set of tasks where the same tasks are repeated over multiple iterations of data (e.g., video frames). Examples of such programs are video analysis applications for computer-aided diagnosis and computer-assisted surgeries. Our design goal is to reduce the implementation efforts and ease collaborative software development of stream programs while supporting efficient execution of the programs on the target hardware. To validate the toolkit, we implemented EM-Automated-RT software with the toolkit and reported our experience. EM-Automated-RT performs real-time video analysis for quality of a colonoscopy procedure and provides visual feedback to assist the endoscopist to achieve optimal inspection of the colon during the procedure. The software has been deployed in a hospital setting to conduct a clinical trial.     

Computer aids for floodlighting design

The lighting engineer is faced with many problems when specifying floodlighting schemes, not least the large amount of computation required to evaluate each potential solution in terms of illuminance grids and isolux contours across the area of interest. Traditionally these kinds of evaluations have been carried out on (programmable) calculators with a design time days for anything other than trivial schemes. Mainframe computers are used in batch mode to ease this problem, but there is a need for an interactive system directly available in the design office. Interactive desk-top microcomputers with graphics facilities make this kind of system both technically and economically viable for the small design office. This paper describes the recently implemented system at Abacus Municipal Ltd, a company involved in the design, supply, and installation of a wide range of floodlighting systems. The primary objective is to provide the lighting engineer with a simple interactive computer system for specifying the details of a floodlighting scheme, leaving the computer to perform the relatively simple but tedious calculations to determine the illumination over the area of interest. User interaction in terms familiar to the lighting engineer is considered to be important so that the engineer's skills, knowledge and experience are enhanced rather than replaced. The design time using the system is typically reduced to a matter of hours rather than days, and improved and more precise results can be presented to the potential client.     

OMAX+ an advanced quality improvement measurement system

This paper describes OMAX+, a microcomputer based quality improvement measurement system developed by the Oregon Productivity and Technology Center at Oregon State University.

OMAX+ is a modified and enhanced version of the Objectives Matrix approach for productivity and quality measurement developed by the late James L. Riggs, Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering. OMAX+ is specifically designed for use by organizations engaged in Total Quality Control (TQC) efforts. Use of OMAX+ presents the industrial engineer engaged in TQC with a useful measurement tool to quantify and track quality improvements. The paper discusses the approaches that will enable the OMAX+ measurement system to be integrated into new or on-going quality improvement programs. OMAX+ is a self-contained program for IBM personal computers and true compatibles. A version with additional graphics capabilities is being developed by the Oregon Productivity and Technology Center for use on Macintosh Computers.

OMAX+ has been successfully used by several industries and service organizations in the Northwestern United States.     

RC-building/1: A GENESYS subsystem for the computerised design and detail of R/C structures

The vast majority of computer programs available to the structural engineer deal with analysis only. This paper describes an integrated suite of computer programs written in the U.K., which not only perform the analysis and design of a reinforced concrete framed structure, but also provide fixing and bar bending schedules suitable for issue direct to a construction site. With most structural commissions the design and detail of the R/C frame is often laborious and repetitive and, for large projects, may represent up to 40% of the consulting engineers total activity. By computerising this process, large savings can be made, particularly in man time, thereby reducing the total timescale and cost of a project.     

Programming methodology and performance issues for advanced computer architectures

This paper will describe some recent attempts to construct transportable numerical software for high-performance computers. Restructuring algorithms in terms of simple linear algebra modules is reviewed. This technique has proved very succesful in obtaining a high level of transportability without severe loss of performance on a wide variety of both vector and parallel computers. The use of modules to encapsulate parallelism and reduce the ratio of data movement to floating-point operations has been demonstrably effective for regular problems such as those found in dense linear algebra. In other situations it may be necessary to express explicitly parallel algorithms. We also present a programming methodology that is useful for constructing new parallel algorithms which require sophisticated synchronization at a large grain level. We describe the SCHEDULE package which provides an environment for developing and analyzing explicitly parallel programs in FORTRAN which are portable. This package now includes a preprocessor to achieve complete portability of user level code and also a graphics post processor for performance analysis and debugging. We discuss details of porting both the SCHEDULE package and user code. Examples from linear algebra, and partial differential equations are used to illustrate the utility of this approach.     

Data management for an interactive graphics system oriented to planning applications

INTRANS is a man-computer interactive graphics system, intended for analysis of urban and transportation planning problems. It is designed to operate primarily under time sharing on IBM 360/370 computers. The paper describes the functional design and the structure of the data management of INTRANS.

The data management is designed to answer the specific needs of planning applications: large data-sets, comparative analysis of several alternatives, and interface with batch processing computer programs. At the same time, the system is designed to operate within an environment of extremely limited resources of core and computing time.     

Experiences with implementing GKS on a PERQ and other computers

Driven by a need for a graphics system that would provide a wider range of functions than is common and that would require less support effort when installed on about 50 mainframes, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has implemented the Graphical Kernel System (GKS). The development project has used PERQ and VAX computers equally. This paper describes some of the design decisions and their effect on the resulting package. In particular, it describes the philosophy of the “workstation interface” and how this provides for devices and systems of greater complexity in the future. The way in which the facilities of the PERQ are matched to GKS concepts is outlined.     

The use of minicomputers in structural analysis

Currently available small computer systems and their potential use in the design and analysis of structures are summarized. The use of expensive main-frame computers in structural analysis is being challenged by the availability of inexpensive minicomputers and microprocessors. However, the use of this new equipment has not been fully exploited due to the lack of software which must be tailored for small computers.The development of interactive, computer assisted, structural design has not progressed significantly in the past due to expensive computer hardware or remote time-sharing costs. The availability of powerful inexpensive computer systems within small design firms will allow the design engineer to gradually integrate interactive computer assisted design into the design process without a major investment in computer hardware.The total cost of a small computer with extended BASIC and FORTRAN IV languages is less than $10,000. In addition to the ability to perform engineering computations the same computer system can be used for administration functions such as accounting, inventory, cost estimates and word processing associated with the writing of specifications and engineering reports. The total cost of a small microcomputer may be completely justified by its use as a high or low speed remote terminal to a larger computer.     

Development of an Intelligent Wheelchair Using Computer Graphics Animation and Simulation

A new robot simulator JC-1 is used as a control software development tool in a project in progress where an intelligent wheelchair for a blind user is being developed. The intelligent wheelchair is planned to be able to fulfill simple symbolic commands like "follow wall" or "follow object" and using the JC-1 simulator an evaluation team which includes e.g. the user, a rehabilitation engineer and a software engineer, can check control algorithms and user interface routines before constructing a real wheelchair prototype. The JC-1 simulator models the environment using simplified boundary- representation where objects, robot sensors and actuators are presented as symbolic objects in the graphics data-base of the simulator. In the JC-1 simulator a robot controller under development controls the motion of the graphical model of the robot while simulator commands or other robot controllers can be used to control the movement of disturbing obstacles. Computer graphics animation and simulation help to find fundamental design errors at an early design stage and as this paper suggests, enable the user of the final product to take part in to the designing process of the robot controller. Benefits and difficulties of using computer graphics simulation in the wheelchair development process are discussed.     

基于计算思维的“计算机图形学”教学改革路径

“计算机图形学”与多个学科存在交叉情况,借助计算机使用数学算法与编程语言生成图形,可绘制出三维、二维图形。其主要包含四个部分,分别是建模、渲染、动画、人机交互。而计算思维则是指思维活动,基于计算机科学去求解问题、设计系统、理解人类行为,其在“计算机图形学”教学中的运用,也主要从以上几个部分入手。因此,基于计算思维进行“计算机图形学”教学改革具有良好的理论基础,为该课程的教学改革提供了指引,从而可以对教学内容进行优化设计、明确设计要点、打造教学流水线、培养学生的计算思维,进而提升“计算机图形学”教学的实效性。     

Computer aided design education—The the more the education, the less the use

The use of computers does not at present fit comfortably into the world of the design engineer. To improve this situation, it is not the engineer but the computer that needs educating. The use of CAD requires a database combined with an engineering editor to allow evolutionary design. In the field of finite element analysis, CAD promises to save money while restoring the engineer to his proper position.     

ISDMS—a scientific data management system

This paper describes the design and development of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Scientific Data Mangement System (ISDMS). The ISDMS is an integrated system providing organization, processing, control and retrieval of scientific time series data in a large laboratory environment using Control Data Corporation (CDC) computers. Data reformatting, graphics, data manipulation, data management, engineering analysis and general utility functions are offered to engineers, scientists, and other end users. The ISDMS usage has grown steadily since its first release into production status in early 1979. The current configuration is well received by the user community and meets most requirements for studying and analysing data in a scientific environment.     

Implementation of computer graphics exercises in freshman engineering graphics education

The rising application of computer-aided design (CAD) in the industrial environment has precipitated an interest in computer graphics for engineering education. At the University of Texas at Austin, a computer graphics laboratory has been established that is primarily dedicated to freshman engineering graphics education. The laboratory is currently equipped with eight Hewlett-Packard 2647 A intelligent graphics terminals. Five software modules have been developed to introduce the student to the graphics terminal and to demonstrate its capabilities for making engineering drawings. The modules permit the construction of line drawings, pictorials, graphs and charts on the CRT terminal without requiring any programming skill on the part of the student. The laboratory exercises have been successfully used by over 1000 engineering graphics students during the first two semesters of implementation. This paper describes the efforts to date in organizing and implementing this freshman computer graphics laboratory.     

A dedicated graphic computer: is it time to specialize?

Mini- and micro-computers have generated a proliferation of general purpose computers. Graphic display devices are also available in a great number and variety. The two elements have been used together, but never fully integrated. This paper postulates that the time has come to stop generalizing, and to use special purpose computers which combine elements of the general purpose computer and the graphic display generator, and which are specifically designed to support computer graphics. The problems anticipated with this specialized machine and with the architecture for a graphics computer are developed and discussed.