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Engineering Modeling - An Iterative Approach
Making the dwelling of a model function as the just like the dwelling of the engineering component modeled turns 2 problems into one. This accelerates co-operation in prototyping of both software model and also the component. Both rapid prototyping and rapid application design/development involve iterative fast development with prototypes communicated. Requirements emerge gradually as part of this process, so early stage design can begin, in co-operation with life-cycle management, marketing accounts etc. To get full take advantage of all of this staff who are part of this design process, manufacturing, management, and life-cycle management need to be able to access the models. The long run aim would be to enable direct modeling/prototyping of this by customers of the modeling tool e.g. engineers/end-user programmers. This type of system documents itself because the structure of the engineering product and software model are displayed/visualized.
Integration of information representation UML/DOORS is progress towards this. Also a user interface is required that makes it easier for engineers to model using such a combined UML/Doors solution
Despite object-oriented programming techniques being heavily relying on the approach used by engineers for Bill of Materials/Product Data Structure modeling this link is becoming difficult. A lot of object-oriented programming was created before graphical user interfaces became practical and common. So objects/classes are often represented mainly by text with visualization/representation being added being an afterthought. This is not helpful for engineers who are accustomed to objects being physical things, or at least diagrams. A further problem has been an over-emphasis on encapsulation (hiding an objects' details, while creating an interface because of its use), and re-use. This may lead to errors because of re-use of objects that aren't fully understood. So the classes/objects have to be visualized, whether or not the user are not committed to change their contents, therefore the user of objects has sufficient knowledge of cooking techniques.
The above mentioned steps would improve the link and co-operation between engineers and modelers/models.
