A User Interface Management System Generator

Much recent research has been focused on user interfaces. A major advance in interface design is the User Interface Management System (UIMS), which mediates between the application and the user. Our research has resulted in a conceptual framework for interaction which permits the design and implementation of a UIMS generator system. This system, called Graphical User Interface Development Environment or GUIDE, allows an interface designer to specify interactively the user interface for an application. The major issues addressed by this methodology are making interfaces implementable, modifiable and flexible, allowing for user variability, making interfaces consistent and allowing for application diversity within a user community. The underlying goal of GUIDE is that interface designers should be able to specify interfaces as broadly as is possible with a manually-coded system. The specific goals of GUIDE are: The designer need not write any interface code. Action routines are provided by the designer or application implementator which implement the actions or operations of the application system. Action routines may have parameters. The designer is able to specify multiple control paths based on the state of the system and a profile of the user. Inclusion of help and prompt messages is as easy as possible. GUIDE\u27s own interface may be generated with GUIDE. GUIDE goes beyond previous efforts in UIMS design in the full parameter specification provided in the interface for application actions, in the ability to reference application global items in the interface, and in the pervasiveness of conditions throughout the system. A parser is built into GUIDE to parse conditions and provide type-checking. The GUIDE framework describes interfaces in terms of three components: what the user sees of the application world (user-defined pictures and user-defined picture classes) what the user can do (tasks and tools) what happens when the user does something (actions and decisions) These three are combined to form contexts which describe the state of the interface at any time

Integración de las funciones de programación de máquinas herramientas de control numérico mediante una aplicación orientada a objetos

Dentro de un entorno integrado de fabricación asistida por computador, el intercambio de información de fabricación entre los distintos sistemas CAX y los sistemas CNC presenta una serie de aspectos problemáticos: 1. En su gran mayoría, los sistemas CAX actuales no han sido diseñados para compartir información, por lo que disponen de una estructura de datos específica y cerrada. 2. Los distintos tipos de sistemas CAX operan sobre niveles de abstracción de información de producto y procesos distintos. 3. El intercambio de información de fabricación se realiza a nivel de trayectoria, y principalmente en código ISO. 4. Adicionalmente a las palabras APT, existe un grupo de palabras de postprocesador normalizadas que permiten traducir ciertas operaciones de mecanizado (operaciones de taladrado) a código ISO. Sin embargo, la implementación de estas palabras de postprocesador depende de cada sistema CAM, y adicionalmente, los patrones geométricos de localización y las operaciones de fresado no son soportadas. 5. Existe una carencia en la estandarización de las operaciones básicas de mecanizado. Dicha estandarización debería permitir el desarrollo de un protocolo para el intercambio de información a nivel de operaciones. Este protocolo sería la base para el intercambio de información de operaciones entre distintos sistemas CAM, y entre sistemas CAM y sistemas CNC, conduciendo a una mejora en la programación automática de las MHCN. Con objeto de mejorar estos aspectos problemáticos, en la Tesis se ha desarrollado un modelo de información a nivel de operaciones para procesos de taladrado y fresado. En el desarrollo de dicho modelo se ha adoptado la norma para representación e intercambio de información de producto ISO 10303-STEP. El modelo de información define una estructura de datos que se emplea posteriormente en el desarrollo de una aplicación orientada a objetos para la programación automática de MHCN a nivel de operaciones en formato STEP. La aplicación tiene como entrada información geométrica (vía ficheros STEP) e información tecnológica de los procesos (vía ficheros de procesos ASCII). La generación de estos ficheros se realiza en un sistema CAD/CAM comercial. XVII In the computer aided manufacturing integrated environment, some problematic issues arise in tiie exchange of manufacturing information between the different CAD/CAM systems and the CNC systems: 1. Currently, most of the CAX systems have not been developed to share information, due to that, these systems have a proprietary and specific data structure. 2. The current CAX systems operate on different levels of abstraction of the product and processes information. 3. The manufacturing information exchange is carried out at the toolpath level, and mainly in the ISO code. 4. In addition to the APT words, there is a group of standardized postprocessor words which allow to translate some machining operations (drilling ones) into ISO code. However, the implementation of these postprocessor words depends on each CAM system, and besides that the milling operations and the machining location patterns are not completely supported. 5. There is a lack in the standardization of the basic machining operations. Such standardization should allow to define a consistent protocol for the exchange of information at the machining operation level. This protocol should allow to exchange and share manufacturing processes information between dissimilar CAM systems, and between CAM systems and CNC systems as well. This way should led to an improvement in the CNC machine tool automatic programming. In order to improve these problematic issues, an information model on the operation level for drilling and milling processes has been developed in the Thesis. The standard ISO 10303-STEP for representation and exchange of product information has been adopted in the model development. This information model defines a data structure which is the basis for the later development of an object-oriented STEP based application. This prototype application can be used for the automatic programming of CNC machine tools in the operation level. The inputs to the application are STEP geometry files for the geometric information, and ASCII process files for the process technological information. These files are generated in a commercial CAD/CAM system