New Object-Oriented PROGRES for Specifying the Conceptual Design Tool GraCAD

This paper deals with the application of graph transformations for the specification of conceptual design tools. We show how the graph rewriting system PROGRES is used for specifying the graph part of the conceptual method for architects in which functional requirements of the building to be designed are elicited by means of graph structures. The consistency of the specified requirements and whether a design matches those requirements is verified with graph constraint checkers. We consider how the new object-oriented extensions of the PROGRES language, i.e. packages and node objects with redefinable methods can be used to achieve the required constraint monitoring and preserving functions in the form of graph checker objects. The prototype for our method, called GraCAD, is created with UPGRADE - the recently developed Java framework for developing visual applications based on a PROGRES specification, and the commercial system for architects ArchiCAD.     

A Bayesian support tool for morphological design

Dynamic computer based support tools for the conceptual design phase have provided a long-standing challenge to develop. This is largely due to the ‘fluid’ nature of the conceptual design phase. Design evaluation methods, which form the basis of most computer design support tools, provide poor support for multiple outcomes. This research proposes a stochastic-based support tool that addresses this problem. A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) is used to represent the causal links between design variables. Included in this research is an efficient method for learning a design domain network from previous design data in the structure of a morphological design chart. This induction algorithm is based on information content. A user interface is proposed to support dynamically searching the conceptual design space, based on a partial design specification. This support tool is empirically compared against a more traditional search process. While no compelling evidence is produced to support the stochastic-based approach, an interesting broader design search behaviour emerges from observations of the use of the stochastic design support tool.     

An ontology-based universal design knowledge support system

An effective and efficient knowledge support system is crucial for universal design process, as it has become a major design issue in the last decade with the growth of the elderly population and disabled people. There are a limited number of CAD investigations on the nature of knowledge processing that supports the cognitive activities of universal design process. Therefore, this paper proposes an ontology-based computer-assisted universal design (CAUD) plug-in tool that supports designers in developing satisfactory universal design solutions in the conceptual design phase. The required knowledge processing and representation of the developed tool is motivated by the ontological language. It is based on the multiple divergence–convergence cognitive strategies and cognitive needs of designers in the analysis/synthesis/evaluation operations. The CAUD plug-in tool is the first attempt to interface the universal design knowledge ontologically and respond to the requirements of conceptual design phase. According to the user acceptance study, the tool is assessed as useful, understandable, efficient, supportive and satisfactory.     

用三维几何约束构建概念化设计阶段的三维布局

概念化设计是产品设计中的一个重要环节，其主要任务是实施产品结构的空间布局，并确定连接关系．由于概念化设计阶段产品结构信息不明确，因此现有的三维设计工具(如solidedge7．0，MDT等)无法有效支持概念化阶段的设计活动．在对装配关系进行抽象的基础上，利用三维约束与驱动实现概念化设计阶段的空间布局设计活动，为进行三维设计工具自顶向下的设计模式奠定了基础．     

Hybrid CAD/E platform supporting exploratory architectural design

Although computers prove useful in aiding human creativity, there is still shortage of adequate software for early-stage explorations in the design disciplines. One of such under-supported disciplines is architectural design. In response to this lack of proper software, architects adopted tools from other industries with a large level of success. However, despite the fact that several types of such tools have now been employed in conceptual architectural design, their application indicates that they are seldom used altogether.This paper presents a hybrid software platform, bringing these various CAD and CAE tools into one design toolkit. Each platform tool introduces a different possibility of designing, and supports computation-based activities, human intuitive ones, or a mixture of both. The platform user can freely switch between various working styles: algorithmic on the one hand, and fuzzy on the other. Moreover, the designer can perform tasks impossible to execute in traditional design, such as quick generation, exploration and evaluation of large design spaces, containing geometrically-complex solutions. The testing of the hybrid platform in a design experiment indicates its ability to support meaningful early-stage explorations and to yield a highly creative design.One of the aims of investigating a CAD/E platform based on the existing software is to lay the foundations for the development of a future CAD/E system for early-stage architectural design — a tool which is currently missing in the architectural practice. By revealing the potentials of the ready-made software, and by pointing out the technical challenges associated with its integration, we wish to suggest a possible direction for future studies, so that solutions developed by academia have higher chances of being noticed and more widely implemented in praxis.     

Conceptual modelling of building regulation knowledge

In recent years knowledge has become more and more a critical production factor for many organisations. Adequate performance of many activities depends on the availability of knowledge. However, volume and complexity of knowledge increase more and more. Consequently the accessibility of knowledge decreases.Knowledge of fire-safety regulations is critical for architects to design fire-safe buildings and for local authorities to verify fire-safety of building designs. However, effective application of this knowledge in the Netherlands is a problem because of the volume, complexity and inaccessibility of the Dutch Fire-Safety Regulations. People in practice don't understand and consequently misinterpret the regulations. A solution to this lack of knowledge is the development of a knowledge based system.In the development of knowledge based systems the conceptual modelling phase is an important one. In this phase knowledge of the application-domain is modelled using a conceptual modelling language.This paper describes criteria for selecting a suitable conceptual modelling language taking into account the nature of knowledge in a particular application-domain. Further it explains what the nature of building regulation knowledge is and which conceptual modelling language is most suitable to represent this knowledge. Finally the paper describes and shows some contents of a knowledge based system that advises architects to design fire-safe buildings conforming to the regulations and helps local authorities to verify building designs with respect to fire-safety regulations.     

CAD for process plants: an update

We review the availability of CAD software for the process design activities of physical properties generation, unit operation design, flowsheeting and dynamic flowsheet simulation. Similarly we look at CAD software for materials control, piping documentation and pipe stressing. We report conclusions drawn from our research into the provision and use of CAD turnkey systems for producing schematics at the conceptual design phase, and for equipment specification, layout, piping design and 3D modelling at the engineering design phase.By reviewing the shortcomings of current CAD systems along with developing CAD technology, we were able to specify the requirements of the next generation of process plant CAD.     

基于知识的设计流程控制

由于电子ＣＡＤ系统的复杂性不断增加，大量高度专业化的ＶＬＳＩ设计工具使设计的工具选择和启动过程变得十分繁琐和复杂。为了克服上述困难，本文提出一个基于知识推理的方法来解决这一问题。我们采用一种有向图和基于设计上下文的产生式规则来共同构造设计流程的模型。     

An Intelligent Tool to Support Requirements Analysis and Conceptual Design of Database Design

As an application of artificial intelligence and expert system technology to database design,this paper presents an intelligent design tool NITDT,which comprises a requirements specification language NITSL,a knowledge representation language NITKL,and an inference engine with uncertainty reasoning capability.NITDT now covers the requirements analysis and conceptual design of database design.However,it is possible to be integrated with another database design tool,NITDBA,developed also at NIT to become an integrated design tool supporting the whole process of database design.     

Support environment for active rule design

The lack of tools for rule generation, analysis, and run-time monitoring appears one of the main obstacles to the widespreading of active database applications. This paper describes a complete tool environment for assisting the design of active rules applications; the tools were developed at Politecnico di Milano in the context of the IDEA Project, a 4-years Esprit project sponsored by the European Commission which was launched in June 1992. We describe tools for active rule generation, analysis, debugging, and browsing; rules are defined in Chimera, a conceptual design model and language for the specification of active rules applications. We also introduce a tool for mapping from Chimera into Oracle, a relational product supporting triggers.Most of the tools described in this paper are fully implemented and currently in operation (beta-testing) within the companies participating to the IDEA Project, with the exception of two of them (called Argonaut-V and Pandora), which will be completed by the end of 1996.Research presented in this paper is supported by Esprit project P6333 IDEA, and by ENEL contract VDS 1/94: Integrity Constraint Management     

Automated verification of design patterns: A case study

Representing design decisions for complex software systems, tracing them to code, and enforcing them throughout the lifecycle are pressing concerns for software architects and developers. To be of practical use, specification and modeling languages for software design need to combine rigor with abstraction and simplicity, and be supported by automated design verification tools that require minimal human intervention. This paper examines closely the use of the visual language of Codecharts for representing design decisions and demonstrate the process of verifying the conformance of a program to the chart. We explicate the abstract semantics of segments of the Java package java.awt as a finite structures, specify the Composite design pattern as a Codechart and unpack it as a set of formulas, and prove that the structure representing the program satisfies the formulas. We also describe a set of tools for modeling design patterns with Codecharts and for verifying the conformance of native (plain) Java programs to the charts.     

Formal analysis of the Shlaer-Mellor method: Towards a toolkit of formal and informal requirements specification techniques

In this paper, we define a number of tools that we think belong to the core of any toolkit for requirements engineers. The tools are conceptual and hence, they need precise definitions that lay down as exactly as possible what their meaning and possible use is. We argue that this definition can best be achieved by a formal specification of the tool. This means that for each semi-formal requirements engineering tool we should provide a formal specification that precisely specifies its meaning. We argue that this mutually enhances the formal and semi-formal technique: it makes formal techniques more usable and, as we will argue, at the same time simplifies the diagram-based notations.At the same time, we believe that the tools of the requirements engineer should, where possible, resemble the familiar semi-formal specification techniques used in practice today. In order to achieve this, we should search existing requirements specification techniques to look for a common kernel of familiar semi-formal techniques and try to provide a formalisation for these.In this paper we illustrate this approach by a formal analysis of the Shlaer-Mellor method for object-oriented requirements specification. The formal specification language used in this analysis is LCM, a language based on dynamic logic, but similar results would have been achieved by means of another language. We analyse the techniques used in the information model, state model, process model and communication model of the Shlaer-Mellor method, identify ambiguities and redundancies, indicate how these can be eliminated and propose a formalisation of the result. We conclude with a listing of the tools extracted from the Shlaer-Mellor method that we can add to a toolkit that in addition contains LCM as formal specification technique.     

Starvation and critical race analyzers for Ada

Starvation and critical race analysis tools for Ada designs are described. These tools are part of a temporal analysis toolset that includes an operational specification language, a language interpreter, and a deadlock analyzer for Ada. The starvation analyzer is based on a set-theoretic model of starvation. It uses a proof tree produced by the deadlock analyzer to define the possible computation space of the design. A preprocessing phase of the starvation tool optimizes the analysis so that the resulting analysis is efficient. Unlike livelock analysis in state machines, the starvation analyzer does not require a priori specification of home states to discern liveness. The critical race analysis tool provides semiautomatic proof of critical races by identifying nondeterministic rendezvous (races) from the proof tree generated by the deadlock analyzer, and then assisting the human operator in identifying which of these constitute critical races. Several design examples are used to demonstrate the capabilities of the two analysis methods     

Visual and textual consistency checking tools for graphical userinterfaces

Designing user interfaces with consistent visual and textual properties is difficult. To demonstrate the harmful effects of inconsistency, we conducted an experiment with 60 subjects. Inconsistent interface terminology slowed user performance by 10 to 25 percent. Unfortunately, contemporary software tools provide only modest support for consistency control. Therefore, we developed SHERLOCK, a family of consistency analysis tools, which evaluates visual and textual properties of user interfaces. It provides graphical analysis tools such as a dialog box summary table that presents a compact overview of visual properties of all dialog boxes. SHERLOCK provides terminology analysis tools including an interface concordance, an interface spellchecker, and terminology baskets to check for inconsistent use of familiar groups of terms. Button analysis tools include a button concordance and a button layout table to detect variant capitalization, distinct typefaces, distinct colors, variant button sizes, and inconsistent button placements. We describe the design, software architecture, and the use of SHERLOCK. We tested SHERLOCK with four commercial prototypes. The outputs, analysis, and feedback from designers of the applications are presented     

Design, construction, and application of a generic visual languagegeneration environment

The implementation of visual programming languages (VPLs) and their supporting environments is time-consuming and tedious. To ease the task, researchers have developed some high-level tools to reduce the development effort. None of these tools, however, can be easily used to create a complete visual language in a seamless way as the lex/yacc tools do for textual language constructions. This paper presents the design, construction and application of a generic visual language generation environment, called VisPro. The VisPro design model improves the conventional model-view-controller framework in that its functional modules are decoupled to allow independent development and integration. The VisPro environment consists of a set of visual programming tools. Using VisPro, the process of VPL construction can be divided into two steps: lexicon definition and grammar specification. The former step defines visual objects and a visual editor, and the latter step provides language grammars with graph rewriting rules. The compiler for the VPL is automatically created according to the grammar specification. A target VPL is generated as a programming environment which contains the compiler and the visual editor. The paper demonstrates how VisPro is used by building a simple visual language and a more complex visual modeling language for distributed programming     

CSDPL—一种基于CMM的软件过程定义语言

软件过程是人和计算机化的工具交互完成的可能持续长时间的复杂实体。软件过程比商业过程自动化程度要低,因为需要更多的人的参与和软件工具的支持,也有更多不断持续改进的需求。软件过程首先要建模,因此建模语言扮演了一个非常关键的角色。从管理的角度出发,CMM提出了一个软件过程概念框架。既要支持软件过程语言的要求的特性,又要支持CMM,基于CMM的软件过程定义语言必须把这个一般性和特殊性的要求结合起来。本文描述的软件过程定义语言CSPDL采用了图形和XML文本相结合的表示方式。同时,软件过程定义工具是支持建模的必需的支持。要尽量地支持软件过程语言的特性,还需要很多工作要做。     

The Design of the Zinc Modelling Language

Zinc is a new modelling language developed as part of the G12 project. It has four important characteristics. First, Zinc allows specification of models using a natural mathematical-like notation. To do so it supports overloaded functions and predicates and automatic coercion and provides arithmetic, finite domain and set constraints. Second, while Zinc is a relatively simple and small language, it can be readily extended to different application areas by means of powerful language constructs such as user-defined predicates and functions and constrained types. Third, Zinc provides sophisticated type and instantiation checking which allows early detection of errors in models. Finally, perhaps the main novelty in Zinc is that it is designed to support a modelling methodology in which the same conceptual model can be automatically mapped into different design models, thus allowing modellers to easily “plug and play” with different solving techniques and so choose the most appropriate for that problem. We describe in detail the various language features of Zinc and the many trade-offs we faced in its design.     

Two-dimensional pinpointing: debugging with formal specifications

Debugging techniques and tools that draw on both the high-level concepts (defined as functions) used in formal specifications and the abstraction and information-hiding constructs used in modern languages are described. The technique is based on two components. One is a novel specification language with support tools. Ada programs are specified with a language that the authors created called Anna. Their tool set is used to check the Ada program's runtime behavior for consistency with the Anna specifications. The other technique uses the tool set to find missing specifications by comparing the specification with program prototypes and to test and debug Ada programs after an accepted specification has been developed. The approach, called two-dimensional pinpointing, locates inconsistencies in software that is structured in levels