gillam@aero.org (April Gillam) (03/04/91)
In developing a number of software systems for projects varying from the conceptual design of satellites to the analysis of adaptive array antennas, we have found that it would be useful to have a program to draw graphs with boxes of information at the nodes. Each node would contain information relevent to its type. For example, the subsystem node contains: the subsystem name (e.g. infrared sensor), the type of subsystem, (e.g. sensor) the mission for the subsystem (e.g. thermal profile) the equation node contains: the equation (e.g. velocity=frequency*wavelength) the source (e.g. Maxwell) the parameters (e.g. velocity, frequency, wavelength) the conditions (e.g. electromagnetic radiation ) The idea is that the user would select a node type and then place it in the window. Then the node would be drawn as a box with the appropriate template from which the user could enter that information. There would also be the ability to draw connectins between the nodes. _subsystem___________________ | | | name: ir_sensor | | type: sensor | | mission: thermal_mapping | | | _____________________________ | | V _equation___________________________________________ | | | equation: radiant_emittance=sigma*temperature^4 | | source: Hudson | | conditions: radiation = blackbody | | label: Stefan-Boltzmann law | | | ____________________________________________________ This information would then be interpreted internally into some format that could be passed on to other programs to translate the information and connectivity of the nodes into the relevent format for a given application. We are working on sparc stations using X-windows. Would anyone know of any public domain or fairly inexpensive package that could do this? I've drawn the ideas out using idraw, or xfig, or any of those type packages, however, I need to get at the internal information and create the templates externally. I could modify idraw or xfig, but would like to see what else is available. Thanks for any info. April Gillam Aerospace Corp. gillam@aerospace.aero.org