OODS: An object-oriented design system – an example of electronics assemblies

Object-oriented design is viewed as a promising approach for handling a wide variety of design problems. However, little work has been done to date on developing object-oriented design systems that can handle a variety of design problems. This paper describes an object-oriented design system (OODS) that uses an object-oriented formalism called design with objects (DwO). The background to DwO is described including the DwO design model, the other design objects in DwO, the use of DwO methods and the resulting design process models. The decomposition of objects in OODS is then described, followed by a description of the configuration system object and the user interface object. The implementation of OODS is then detailed. This implementation uses the Internet to communicate between OODS and users, and with databases that may be geographically scattered. The use of OODS is illustrated by a description of an application as an example that involves the design of electronics assemblies. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, a new object-oriented design formalism is presented. Second, an implementation architecture for this formalism is described, and, third, an example application is presented showing how this approach can be used.