Auto-trol Technology Inc, Denver, Colorado arrived at the Object World show in San Francisco armed with its Mozaic environment for integration and development of engineering applications. The company claims that the object-oriented system is most extensive implementation of the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data, STEP, International Standards Organisation standard. The company says that Mozaic provides a cost-effective means of integrating existing manufacturing and non-manufacturing applications and a framework for developing a new generation of object-oriented, STEP-compliant applications capable of supporting concurrent engineering – real-time data-sharing between different design manufacturing organisations on a project. Mozaic brings together third-party technologies in three-dimensional modelling, constraint management, graphics display and object-oriented database management in a vendor-neutral environment while remaining virtually independent of any of the underlying constituent technology components. When integrating applications, there is no need to hard-wire every application individually to every other – each new application need only be brought into the Mozaic STEP framework, which acts as a software bus to link all applications together. The STEP Data Access Interface provides a standard programming interface to all objects stored in a single vendor-neutral database. The STEP standard enables any database to be used, but Autotrol has opted for Object Design Inc’s ObjectStore in the first release of Mosaic. The STEP solids modeller provides surface and solids modelling engines using the ACIS modeller from Spatial Technologies Inc and Advanced Geometry Library from Applied Geometry Inc, variational geometry capability based on the constraint management system from D-Cubed Ltd, and supports geometry creation, transformation, intersection, evaluation and editing via STEP objects in C++ which are required to build modelling applications.
Common Object Request Broker
The display system uses STEP standard presentation objects to display geometry objects through PHIGS and PEX, performing display operations such as windowing and viewing, cursor control, rubberbanding, picking and advanced rendering functions. There is a Common Object Request Broker Architecture-compliant distributed object management system to provide a hardware-independent communications link between applications, resources and data for integration – Autotrol is evaluating the object request broker implementations from HyperDesk Inc and Digital Equipment Corp. The user interface management system enables developers to prototype hardware-independent, user-configurable graphical user interfaces for their applications in real time – a user can switch from Open Look to Motif, or modify elements of the user interface as desired, without recompiling. The company claims that use of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture as the backbone of the system, core resources can be plugged in and out without affecting existing applications, so that the newest technology components can be used. Mozaic is scheduled for availability in first quarter 1993 through the Autotrol Systems Integration Group for manufacturing companies in the US and Canada and will be released to third-party systems integrators in Europe in the second quarter. Pricing will be on a contract by-contract basis through the company’s Systems Integration Group. Typical Mozaic systems integration will cover the analysis of the current situation and requirements, design of the Mozaic-based system and integration within the existing environment – and the product is so new that the company is not quite sure of its name – twice in the announcement, the name mysteriously changes from Mozaic to Monarch.
