Hms. Lababidi et R. Banaresalcantara, AN INTEGRATED GRAPHICAL USER-INTERFACE FOR A CHEMICAL-ENGINEERING DESIGN SUPPORT SYSTEM, Chemical engineering research & design, 71(A4), 1993, pp. 429-436
KBDS has been proposed as a prototype design support system and target
ed to be used by a team of cooperating designers during the design of
chemical plants. The development of a graphical user interface for KBD
S has been one of the intermediate objectives. Within KBDS, a knowledg
e representation model has been proposed to maintain and use a history
of the design process. It consists of six closely interrelated types
of objects: projects, metaschema, schema, units, items of equipment, a
nd variables. The interface was designed to make those objects and the
ir relations easily accessible for examination and manipulation. It is
composed of three subsystems: The Top Window that acts as a system ma
nager; the Scheme Hierarchy that displays the structure of the design
history; and the Flowsheet Tool that provides a graphical representati
on of alternative designs. Objects shown by the interface are active i
n the sense that they are associated to a set of behaviours as respons
es to mouse events (e.g. moving, displaying a menu, invoking a browsin
g window). The interface is fully integrated with the underlying knowl
edge representation system, and allows flexible navigation through the
various parts of the design structure. It was implemented using the o
bject-oriented paradigm, and its open architecture eases the access an
d integration to other applications.