Computing with Objects: What Does Industry Hope to Gain from it

Beucke, K.; Ranglack, D.; ,

Computing with Objects: What Does Industry Hope to Gain from it

by K. Beucke, CAD-Development HOCHTIEF, Frankfurt, Germany,
D. Ranglack, CAD-Development HOCHTIEF, Frankfurt, Germany,

Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Computing in Civil and Building Engineering

Abstract:

Although the need for an integration of engineering tasks has been stressed for a long time, the success that we see in this regard is very limited. We believe that there is justified hope for object oriented concepts to really provide the basis for considerable progress in the integration of the engineering workflow. The construction industry primarily views itself as users of application software. This software, however, ought to be task specific. A translation of the physical problems dealing with real (highly complex) objects as viewed by the engineer into abstract, 'computer-digestable' (less complex) representations should not be necessary. Some tasks, for instance critical or confidential ones, we will have to solve ourselves. We hop that an object-oriented approach will enable us to produce and use tools that are highly flexible, specifically for mapping complex objects like engineering structures. It can no longer be justified to write - or to have written - code that is only usable for a very specific task and that has to be thrown away completely when this task is replaced or changes substantially. Practical experiences with object-oriented concepts will be reported for an interface between CAD-applications and databases.

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