Jose L. Encarnacao - Böcker

This book discusses the maturity of today's database technology in the light of the needs of engineering applications and industrial automation. Those at the forefront of database research come up with new techniques to satisfy new needs, but today's engineering community must live with database systems that reflect the older state of the art. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate that even though solutions based on today's technology are less than perfect, they do provide solutions to current pressing problems. The book mainly covers current database technology and its applications, but also mentions some promising techniques under research in order to prepare the reader for the future. The book contains four chapters that cover the significance of engineering databases, the current state of database technology, the utilization of engineering databases, and two extensive case studies. For cursory reading, the chapters may be considered to be self-contained. Intended readers are middle management and engineers from industry who deal with automation both as users and vendors, consultants to such industry, vendors of database systems, and lecturers and students.The book requires no special background in informatics.

Die Unternehmensführung ist heute auf umfassende, aber korrekte, vor allem strukturierte, vom Außendienstmitarbeiter unbeeinflußte Informationen über den Wirkungsgrad des Außendienstes und über das Marktgeschehen angewiesen. Das Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe und die Fraunhofer-Arbeitsgruppe Graphische Datenverarbeitung, Darmstadt, bearbeiten deshalb ein gemeinsames Projekt AUDIUS zur Unterstützung des Außendienstes durch DV-Systeme. Das Buch enthält eine ausführliche Analyse der Aufgaben des Außendienstes, seiner Ziele und Probleme sowie der an ihn gestellten Anforderungen. Es gibt einen Überblick über den Stand der Technik bei den Komponenten, die im Rahmen eines integrativen DV-Ansatzes zur Unterstützung des Außendienstes Verwendung finden können. Ein erstes Grobkonzept einer modularen, flexibel konfigurierbaren Basisarchitektur und Strategien zur Einführung eines solchen Systems werden vorgestellt. Das Buch wendet sich an Fachleute aus der Praxis, die Anbieter oder Anwender derartiger Systeme werden wollen, sowie an Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und Ingenieure mit Interesse an Arbeitsorganisation.

Die zunehmenden Fähigkeiten von Rechnersystemen ermöglichen den Einsatz komplexer mathematischer Methoden für Anwendungen aus dem Bereich der Graphischen Datenverarbeitung und des Computer Aided Design (CAD). Der effektive Einsatz dieser Methoden in den verschiedenen Darstellungsbereichen der Graphischen Datenverarbeitung, wie CAD-, Animations- oder Visualisierungssystemen, erfordert eine intensive Abstimmung und Zusammenarbeit der Fachgebiete Mathematik und Informatik sowohl in der Forschung als auch in der industriellen Anwendung. Mit der Zielsetzung, einerseits die mathematisch-geometrischen Grundlagen und andererseits die Anwendungen geometrischer Verfahren im Graphik- und CAD-Bereich darzustellen und zu diskutieren, veranstaltete das Darmstädter Zentrum für Graphische Datenverarbeitung (ZGDV) in Zusammenarbeit mit der Fraunhofer-Arbeitsgruppe für Graphische Datenverarbeitung (FhG-AGD) und der Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt vom 28. bis 30. März 1990 den Workshop, aus dem die Beiträge dieses Buches hervorgehen.

Die in diesem Buch ver|ffentlichten Aufs{tze behandeln das Thema Telekommunikation und multimediale Anwendungen der Informatik mit Schwerpunktlagerung zu folgenden Themen: - Interpersonal Computing - the Third Revolution in Desktop Publishing - Next Generation User Interface Development Tools - Entwicklungslinien der Ger{tetechnik f}r Graphiksysteme - Betriebserfahrungen und Messungen an einem gro~en FDDI-Netz ...und sich daraus ergebende Konsequenzen - Visualisation Activities in the UK - From Broadband ISDN to Multimedia Computer Networks - Constructing an Image Database for the Collection of Art Museums - HDTV-Technologie in Europa-Statusreport und neue Anwendungen - Multimedia Telecommunications toward the 21st Century - Betriebsaspekte eines gro~en OSI-Netzes - Kommunikation und neue Dienste - Basismechanismen f}r Multimediale Systeme - Programmierenmultimedialer Anwendungen - Objektorientierte graphische Benutzerschnittstellen - Hypertextsysteme-

Fractal geometry has become popular in the last 15 years, and its applications can be found in technology, science or even the arts. Fractal methods and formalism are seen today as a general, abstract but nevertheless practical instrument for the description of nature in a wide sense. But it was computer graphics which made possible the increasing popularity of fractals several years ago, long after their mathematical formulation. The two disciplines are tightly linked. This book contains the scientific contributions to an international workshop held at the Computer Graphics Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. The target of the workshop was to present the wide spectrum of inter-relationships and interactions between fractal geometry and computer graphics. The topics vary from fundamentals and new theoretical results to various applications and systems development. All contributions are original, unpublished papers. The presentations have been discussed in two working groups; the discussion results, together with actual trends and topics of future research, are reported in the last section.The topics of the book are divided into four sections: fundamentals, computer grapics and optical simulation, simulation of natural phenomena, image processing and image analysis.

Automation is nothing new to industry. It has a long tradition on the factory floor, where its constant objective has been to increase the productivity of manufacturing processes. Only with the advent of computers could the focus of automation widen to include administrative and information-handling tasks. More recently, automation has been extended to the more intellectual tasks of production planning and control, material and resource planning, engineering design, and quality control. New challenges arise in the form of flexible manu­ facturing, assembly automation, and automated floor vehicles, to name just a few. The sheer complexity of the problems as well as the state of the art has led scientists and engineers to concentrate on issues that could easily be isolated. For example, it was much simpler to build CAD systems whose sole objective was to ease the task of drawing, rather than to worry at the same time about how the design results could be interfaced with the manufacturing or assembly processes. It was less problematic to gather statistics from quality control and to print reports than to react immediately to first hints of irregularities by inter­ facing with the designers or manufacturing control, or, even better, by auto­ matically diagnosing the causes from the design and planning data. A heav- though perhaps unavoidable - price must today be paid whenever one tries to assemble these isolated solutions into a larger, integrated system.

Powerful new technology has been made available to researchers by an increasingly competitive workstation market. Papers from Canada, Japan, Italy, Germany, and the U.S., to name a few of the countries represented in this volume, discuss how workstations are used in experiments and what impact this new technology will have on experiments. As usual for IFIP workshops, the emphasis in this volume is on the formulation of strategies for future research, the determination of new market areas, and the identification of new areas for workstation research. This is the first volume of a book series reporting the work of IFIP WG 5.10. The mission of this IFIP work- ing group is to promote, develop and encourage advancement of the field of computer graphics as a basic tool, as an enabling technology and as an important part of various application areas.

Das Projekt wird von 11 Fraunhofer-Instituten durchgeführt, die zusammen mit Industriepartnern Anwendungen aus folgenden Themenbereichen erproben: Home Support; Medizintechnik; VLSI-Entwurf und Mikroelektronik; CAD-Maschinenbau; Logistik; Schulung, Training und Information.

2 e This book describes principles, methods and tools that are common to computer applications for design tasks. CAD is considered in this book as a discipline that provides the required know-how in computer hardware and software, in systems analysis and in engineering methodology for specifying, designing, implementing, introducing, and using computer based systems for design purposes. The first chapter gives an impression of the book as a whole, and following chapters deal with the history and the components of CAD, the process aspect of CAD, CAD architecture, graphical devices and systems, CAD engineering methods, CAD data transfer, and application examples. The flood of new developments in the field and the success of the first edition of this book have led the authors to prepare this completely revised, updated and extended second edition. Extensive new material is included on computer graphics, implementation methodology and CAD data transfer; the material on graphics standards is updated. The book is aimed primarily at engineers who design or install CAD systems. It is also intended for students who seek a broad fundamental background in CAD.