jrg@Apple.COM (John R. Galloway) (04/24/89)
I am looking at puttiing together a knowledge base concerning all
the systems aboard a large (ocean going) vessel. I do not invision
using an expert system, but called it a knowledge base as most of the
textual information will concern "how to" descriptions rather than
just items as thought of in a normal data base. Such items would cover
maintaince and emergency procedures, spare parts lists, vendor address
information, disassembly/assembly procedures, theory of operation,
responsible crew members, outstanding to-do items, etc. and all of that
(and more) relative to each subsystem (AC power, DC power, fresh water,
salt water, waste water, heating, cooling, fuel, engines, batteries,
alarms, controls, ... get the idea?) on the vessel. Also a key part
would be schematic drawings of each system. The latter should not just
be static pictures but more like a CAD object such that it could be
mainipulated to remove/highlite specific systems, zoom, rotate, translate,
and gennerally "drive around inside". One should be able to mainipulate
the knowledge base and the schematics seperatly but also be able to
select an item on a schematic and have that select the relavant portion
of the knowledge base so that you could read about it. Hence the
schematic must be much more than just lines, objects in it must be known.
The knowledge base would also be very multi threaded and be able to
highlight/select items in the schematic for illistrative purposes.
It is also necessary that the entire system (once installed) be very easy
and intuitive to use (both in read only and update mode) such that with
very little training a crew member can use the system to read inter-ship
mail/communications, select a to-do item, use the Kbase to read up on
what is needed, do it, and report it done making the needed chnages (the
last item would require that updates be made as a chnage history and
nothing actually be deleted, or a "privleged" updater would have to make
the changes or at least ok them).
Any thoughts on Mac appllications that would allow the creation of such
a system? I would invision it as a data base accessed by 2 or more
cooperative applictions but then again I am pretty new to the Mac ( having
not yet bought one, but in the process, but in the Unix/workstation world
that is how I would see it). The data base would contain the schematics
directly as a set of objects with name, type, physical dimensions,
descriptsions (color type etc), drawing info, and pointers to/into text
objects. The text would also have to have a data base which maintains
the various threads and pointers to schematic objects. How does hypercard
relate to all this? What 3D (wire frame) CAD systems are there that
keep the objects in question as a set of "things" mot just lines?
apple!jrg John R. Galloway, Jr. contract programmer, San Jose, Ca
These are my views, NOT Apple's, I am a GUEST here, not an employee!!