DrawCAD: using deductive object-relational databases in CAD

  • Authors:

  • Mengchi Liu

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, KIS 5B6, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Software—Practice & Experience
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Computer-aided design (CAD) involves the use of computers in the various stages of engineering design. CAD has large volumes of data with complex structures that need to be stored and managed effectively and properly. Database systems provide general purpose programs that can be used to access and manipulate large amounts of data stored in the database. They also provide an independence between the program accessing data and the database. It is therefore important to use database systems to store CAD data in the most efficient and effective manner for easy retrieval and better management.Graphical objects can be created, in CAD, by reusing previously created objects. The data of these objects have references to the other objects they contain. Deductive object-relational databases not only provide direct support for the effective storage and efficient access to large amounts of data with complex structures on disk, but also perform the inferences and computations to obtain the complete data of graphical objects that reuse other objects. They should be able to play a major role in CAD systems. This is the idea behind the development of the DrawCAD system. DrawCAD is a CAD system built on top of the Relationlog object-relational deductive database system. It facilitates the creation of graphical objects by reusing previously created objects. The DrawCAD system illustrates how CAD systems can be developed, using database systems to store and manage data and also perform the inferences and computations that are normally performed by the application program.