A Graphics Preprocessor for Computer-Aided Design and Drafting of frame Structures

An interactive microcomputer-based graphics preprocessor has been developed for computer-aided design and drafting of plane frame structures. The graphics preprocessor has been developed in Advanced BASIC version 3.0 on an IBM Personal Computer. The preprocessor allows various manipulations of the frame structure such as zooming, panning, shrinking, expanding, node labeling, and element labeling. The flow between the graphics display and the data input is very easy and allows the user to enter new frame data, visually check it, and edit the data quickly.