Application Framework

 

The Application Framework uses an associativity engine to simplify the development of your CAD application.

Based on application/document architecture, it does this due to the following features:

  • Application data is handled by the mechanism of attributes

  • Attributes may be organized according to your development needs

  • Multiple documents can be managed by an application

  • Ready-to-use modeling data attributes common to CAD/CAM applications

  • Data storage services

  • A ready-to-use Undo-Redo and Copy-Paste functions

Since OCAF handles your application structure, your only major development task is the creation of application-specific data and GUIs. It is the organization of application data due to which OCAF differs from any other CAD framework. In OCAF, data structures are not shape-driven, but reference-key driven. In this respect, attributes such as shape data, color, material, are attached to a deeper invariant structure of a model than the shapes themselves. Then OCAF organizes and embeds these attributes in a document.

OCAF documents are in their turn managed by an OCAF application.

image\af.gif

 

The topics are dealt with in the following chapters:

 

Data Attributes

Data Framework

Documents

Persistent Data Storage

 

A glossary is also provided to clarify key terms used when discussing OCAF.

 

Note: All OCAF packages are located in two tool-kits:

This helps to significantly decrease memory use by applications that do not need visualization.