JPH09282351A - Cad system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a CAD system which is improved in operation efficiency by displaying information on a trouble which easily occurs before and at the time of trouble occurrence, preventing the trouble from occurring, and supporting recovery from the trouble and restoration. SOLUTION: When workers are performing various operations, they are instructed for retrieval of trouble analytic information from an input device 6. An operation history file 3 contains operations which have been done so far and index keys are given to those operation and combinations of operations. An index information control part 4 refers to a fault table 2 according to the index key of the current operation and combination of operations to obtain importance corresponding to trouble which possibly occurs. Trouble analytic information on the trouble is retrieved from a trouble analytic information storage part 1 and outputted to an output device 7 according to its importance.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a computer-aided design support system (CAD), and more particularly to a CAD system that prevents an operational trouble by an operator and facilitates recovery from the operational trouble.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, CAD systems that support design by computers have become widespread, and not only operators specialized in CAD systems but also general designers are using the CAD systems. In addition, the CAD system has become more sophisticated and its operation has become complicated. In such a situation, a CAD system operation error frequently occurs. In the CAD system, when an operator makes an operation error, the cause of the occurrence of the error is investigated, the trouble is recovered, the procedure for recovering the previous state is not immediately known, and the operation is interrupted. is there. Further, there is a problem that a great amount of time is wasted in recovering / restoring the trouble and work efficiency is reduced. Therefore, measures to quickly recover from operational troubles are awaited.

As one of conventional methods for recovering from operational troubles, all the procedures operated by an operator are stored as an operation history, which is displayed or re-executed to analyze and recover the operation troubles. Is being carried out. However, just by displaying and re-executing, a great deal of time is required to find the cause, and work efficiency is reduced. In particular, there is a problem that knowledge and experience are required to identify and recover the cause by using such operation history, and a beginner with little operation experience cannot be an effective method.

Further, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 3-189851, a computer-aided education system (CAI) is provided.
In the above, the operator confirms the operation by collecting and re-executing operations such as key input and mouse instruction of the operator, but since the above confirmation cannot be performed, the operator is instructed and troubles are dealt with. It does not have the function to do.

As another method, it is considered to extract the cause of trouble based on the operation performed up to several steps in the processing technology of software and user interface. However, it is uniform to deal with the user for the cause of the trouble extracted in this way. For example, if multiple trouble causes are extracted,
The order in which recovery / repair information is provided to the user for those causes of trouble is always constant. For example, even if the recovery / recovery information provided later for a certain user is often effective, it is set in advance. Recovered only in the order
No repair information is provided. Therefore, there is a problem that such a trouble recovery method does not always recover early and the work efficiency is not improved. As described above, the process of changing the order of displaying the information on the cause of trouble and / or the recovery action depending on the operator has not been considered.

Further, according to the conventional technique, the trouble which is likely to occur by the operation is known before the trouble occurs,
It was not considered to avoid troubles.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and reads out recovery / repair information based on a trouble case that occurred in the past before a trouble occurred,
Displaying on the worker terminal provides a means to prevent trouble from occurring, and even after the trouble occurs, displaying recovery / repair information based on the trouble case on the worker terminal interrupts work. It is an object of the present invention to provide a CAD system capable of shortening the time and improving work efficiency.

[0008]

According to the invention described in claim 1, in a CAD system, a CAD system main body,
Trouble analysis information storage means for storing information about troubles, a trouble table composed of trouble key information for indicating the contents of troubles or operations or combinations of the manipulations on the CAD system main body, and an importance degree based on the occurrence frequency of troubles And operation log information storage means for storing the operation on the CAD system main body, and the trouble key information corresponding to the operation based on the combination of the operation or the operation up to and including the operation during the operation. Is selected according to the degree of importance, and the trouble key information selected is used to read and output the information on the trouble stored in the analysis information storage means.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in a CAD system, the CAD system main body, trouble analysis information storage means for storing information regarding troubles, and the CA
D Failure table composed of trouble key information for indicating operation or combination of operations and trouble content and importance, operation history information storage means for storing operation on the CAD system main body, when trouble occurs Based on the operation at that time or a combination of operations up to and including the operation, the trouble table is referred to, the corresponding trouble key information is selected according to the degree of importance, and the analysis information is obtained using the selected trouble key information. It is characterized in that it has a control means for reading out and outputting the information relating to the trouble stored in the storage means.

The invention according to claim 3 is the CAD system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the importance is calculated based on the frequency of troubles that have occurred in the past.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the CAD system according to any one of the first to third aspects, the work is performed based on the information regarding the trouble in which the control means has the importance level read out. The failure table is updated based on the confirmation input of the trouble countermeasure performed by the person, and the failure table is changed according to the updated importance.

[0012]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram including an embodiment of a CAD system of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a trouble analysis information storage unit, 2 is a failure table,
3 is an operation history file, 4 is an index information control unit,
Reference numeral 5 is an input / output control unit, 6 is an input device, 7 is a display device, and 8 is a CAD system main body.

The trouble analysis information storage unit 1 stores, as trouble analysis information, screen information and related technical information such as a cause of occurrence of a trouble presented to an operator, a countermeasure, and an operation procedure until the occurrence. Each trouble analysis information has a trouble key for searching. This trouble key can be hierarchized and a plurality of trouble keys can be provided. When searching, the trouble key is used for access, and the corresponding trouble analysis information is displayed on the worker terminal. The trouble analysis information storage unit 1 can be configured by, for example, a database.

The failure table 2 is made up of an operation or a combination of operations, a trouble key indicating trouble analysis information corresponding to a trouble that may occur at that time, and an importance level. The failure table 2 is used to select the specified trouble analysis information from the trouble analysis information storage unit 1 based on the operation history information extracted from the operation history file. The operation or the combination of operations in the failure table 2 can be described by directly describing the command name or the operation name, or by using the corresponding index information.

The operation history file 3 records executed operation commands and key inputs and mouse instructions corresponding to the operation commands. As for the record of each operation, in addition to recording the command name and the operation name, it is also possible to record using the corresponding index information. At this time, index information can be recorded not only for commands and operations but also for combinations of a plurality of commands and operations. The operation history file 3 can normally be composed of a semiconductor storage device of a work terminal, a connected magnetic disk device or the like for each worker.

The index information control unit 4 has a function of extracting a specific operation command or a combination of operation commands from the operation history file 3 and a function of passing the extracted information to the failure table 2 to obtain corresponding trouble analysis information. It also has a function of passing the obtained trouble analysis information to the display device 7, and a function of updating the importance in the failure table 2 in order to process the trouble, cause, and countermeasure fixed by the operator as statistical information.

The input / output control unit 5 operates the operation history file 3,
It controls the exchange of information between the index information control unit 4 and the CAD system body 8. Further, it also functions as a user interface such as receiving an input from the input device 6 and controlling display on the display device 7. At the time of work, the operation input by the operator from the input device 6 is stored in the operation history file 3 and is also passed to the CAD system main body 8.
Output to the display device 7 and updating of the screen are performed according to the information output from the AD system body 8. Further, when an operator makes a display request of a predicted trouble, or when a trouble occurs, the operation history or the index information is read from the operation history file 3 in response to a request from the index information control unit 4 to control the index information. The trouble analysis information is passed to the display unit 7 from the index information control unit 4.

The input device 6 is composed of a keyboard, a pointing device such as a mouse, and the like, and transmits an input from an operator to the input / output control section 5. In addition, the display device 7
Is composed of, for example, a CRT display, etc., and displays the CAD screen by the CAD system main body 8 by the input / output control unit 5 and the trouble analysis information from the index information control unit 4 when a request for displaying a predicted trouble or when a trouble occurs. indicate.

In the CAD system body 8, tools corresponding to the design process are hierarchically constructed, and an operator can use the tools by inputting a command for selecting the tools as necessary. These tools correspond to part of the search information added to the trouble analysis information,
It is also used to limit the search scope. The CAD system body 8 may be a CAD system for any purpose, and here, as an example, an electric CAD system is used.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an example of the operation history file. The operation history file 3 shown in FIG. 2 is composed of a command area and an index information area. In the command area, a detailed history from key input operation to mouse instruction is recorded for each executed command.

The index information area is an area added by the index information control unit 4, and is added to an operation required to correspond to the failure table 2. Here, in the index information area, a trouble key area in which a key indicating the type of trouble is stored, a first index key area in which index information is added corresponding to each command, and a combination of a plurality of commands A second index key area to which index information is added is provided. These trouble keys and index keys are referred to when making correspondence with the failure table 2. If correspondence with the failure table 2 can be made only by the operation name such as a command, the index information area is not necessary.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an example of the failure table. The failure table 2 shown in FIG. 3 includes an operation area in which a predefined operation or a combination of operations is registered, a trouble area in which the content of a trouble that may occur corresponding to the registered operation is registered, The trouble area has an importance area indicating the importance of each trouble. The importance can be a value indicating the frequency of occurrence of the trouble. The value of this importance can be defined in advance, but it can be configured to automatically change based on the trouble information specified by the operator using the input device 6. In the example shown in FIG. 3, both the index key and the command name are displayed in the operation area, but the present invention is not limited to this, and only one of them may be configured.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing an example of a trouble analysis information search operation in a system including an embodiment of the CAD system of the present invention. The worker performs various operations using the tools provided in the CAD system. Use the tool to run various commands. At this time, the worker can search for information about the trouble that may occur at that time.

When the trouble analysis information search is instructed in S11, an index key is added to the command stored in the operation history file 3 in S12, and an index is added to a plurality of command sets in S13. Add a key. Further, in S14, the identification information of the currently used design tool is added.

In S15, the failure table 2 is referred to based on the index key of the command currently being executed and the command set including the command. The failure table 2 provides one or more trouble keys corresponding to the command currently being executed and the set of commands including the command, and the corresponding importance. All of these or index keys are sorted in order of importance, for example, and S16
In step S17, the trouble analysis information corresponding to each trouble key is searched from the trouble analysis information storage unit 1.
The search result is output at. Based on the output of the search result, the operator can confirm in advance the troubles that are likely to occur at present and prevent the trouble from occurring.

The identification information of the design tool added in S14 is used to limit the search range and search at a higher speed when searching from a large amount of trouble analysis information.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a specific example of a trouble analysis information search operation in a system including an embodiment of the CAD system of the present invention. Now, it is assumed that the worker has executed the command A and the command B and then executed the command C to reach the present. At this point, it is assumed that the worker gives an instruction to search for the trouble analysis information.

First, index information is added based on the operation history stored in the operation history file 3. In this example, the index key K00 for the command C
1 is added, and the index key W001 is added to the set of commands A, B, and C.

The index information control unit 4 extracts the index keys K001 and W001 from the operation history file 3 as index information and passes them to the failure table 2 together with the identification information of the currently used design tool. In the failure table 2, a pair of trouble key and importance corresponding to each passed index key is obtained. The trouble analysis information storage unit 1 is searched by the obtained trouble key and the passed identification information of the design tool. As a result of the search, the trouble analysis information read from the trouble analysis information storage unit 1 is displayed on the display device 7 as image information or character information via the index information control unit 4 and the input / output control unit 5.

At this time, the displayed trouble analysis information can be displayed in descending order of importance, for example.
This allows the operator to refer to the information about the trouble that is most likely to occur. Alternatively, the index keys can be displayed in order of importance. As a result, the worker has troubles specific to the command,
It is possible to easily recognize the trouble caused by the relation with other commands separately.

The display order is determined according to the search order when searching the trouble analysis information storage section 1 from the failure table 2, or when the index information control section 4 displays it on the display device 7. You can sort by referring to.

FIG. 6 is a flow chart showing an example of a search operation when a trouble occurs in the system including the embodiment of the CAD system of the present invention. Now S2
When the worker is performing various operations using the tools provided in the CAD system body 8 in step 1, S2
It is assumed that a trouble occurs due to an operation mistake in 2.
At this time, the operator can instruct the trouble analysis information search in S23.

In S24, the index information control unit 4 confirms the error code and identifies it as a trouble key in order to identify what the current trouble content is. Also,
In S25, the index key is added retroactively to the commands stored in the operation history file 3. Further, in S26, the index key is also added to the set of a plurality of commands. Furthermore, in S27,
Add the identification information of the design tool currently used.

In S28, the failure table 2 is referred to based on the command currently in execution in which the trouble has occurred and the index key of the command set including the command. From the failure table 2, the importance corresponding to the trouble that has occurred is obtained from the one or more trouble keys that correspond to the command in which the trouble has occurred and the command set including the command. When a plurality of degrees of importance are obtained, the index keys are rearranged in the order of importance and S2
At 9, the trouble analysis information corresponding to the trouble key is retrieved from the trouble analysis information storage unit 1, and at S30, the retrieval result is output together with the command or the set of commands. Based on this output, the operator knows whether the trouble occurred only in the command being operated or in combination with other commands, and then referring to the trouble analysis information to solve the trouble. Can be achieved.

When certain trouble analysis information is displayed and the trouble is solved based on the information, if it is determined in S31 that the trouble analysis information is valid, S3 is executed.
In 2, the operator inputs a trouble confirmation. The information of the trouble determination is passed to the failure table 2 as the information of the trouble occurrence frequency, the statistical processing is executed, and the importance key is automatically updated. At this time, the importance of the failure table 2 includes the case where the trouble occurrence frequency itself is present. In this way, the importance of the failure table 2 is updated to the latest importance each time a trouble occurs. As a result, the latest trouble analysis information tailored to the situation at each time can be obtained not only when a trouble occurs but also when searching before a trouble occurs, effectively avoiding the trouble and aiming for early resolution of the trouble. be able to.

If it is determined in S31 that the displayed trouble analysis information is not valid, or if there is still undisplayed trouble analysis information in S34, a new display is made from the undisplayed trouble analysis information in S35. To do. Further, when all the retrieved trouble analysis information is not valid, that is, when it cannot be used as a measure for solving the trouble, it is impossible to provide information for further trouble solving. Trouble resolution is carried out by a worker or an expert. Then, in S36, the cause / countermeasure, etc. is promptly registered as a new trouble.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of an example of an operation when a trouble occurs in the modified example of the system including the embodiment of the CAD system of the present invention. In the figure, 9 is a trouble table. In the example shown in FIG. 7, the trouble analysis information storage unit 1 has a trouble table 9. This trouble table stores the number of times each trouble has occurred, for each command or set of commands that caused the trouble. For example, the specific example shown in FIG. 7 indicates that the trouble of the trouble key T001 has occurred three times in the command A.

When a worker encounters a trouble during command execution, the trouble key corresponding to the trouble is used to refer to the trouble table 9 to identify the command that causes the trouble and The number of trouble occurrences in the command can be obtained. By using this as the degree of importance, the trouble analysis information can be retrieved and displayed easily and quickly in the order of the causes with the highest frequency of occurrence. Further, it is also possible to search by limiting the cause by using the index information added to the operation history file 3.

When the operator inputs trouble confirmation information by referring to the trouble analysis information, the value of the entry of the trouble table 9 determined from the cause of the confirmed trouble analysis information and the trouble key is changed. Also,
Along with that, statistical processing is performed to update the importance of the failure table 2. At this time, the importance of the failure table 2 is
It may be the occurrence frequency itself of the trouble stored in the trouble table 9.

[0040]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the present invention, it is possible to obtain trouble analysis information in accordance with a combination of operations, in addition to the operation performed alone. Trouble analysis information can be obtained. In addition, trouble analysis information can be obtained not only when trouble has occurred, but also when trouble has not occurred, so that trouble analysis information can be obtained for troubles that are likely to occur. The efficiency can be improved. Further, since the trouble analysis information that is output is presented according to the degree of importance, efficient trouble avoidance, and quick trouble recovery and restoration can be achieved, which significantly improves the work efficiency of the operator. The effect is that you can.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram including an embodiment of a CAD system of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram showing an example of an operation history file.

FIG. 3 is a configuration diagram showing an example of a failure table.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an example of a trouble analysis information search operation in a system including an embodiment of a CAD system of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a specific example of a trouble analysis information search operation in a system including an embodiment of a CAD system of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing an example of a search operation when a trouble occurs in the system including the embodiment of the CAD system of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of an example of an operation when a trouble occurs in the modified example of the system including the embodiment of the CAD system of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... Trouble analysis information storage unit, 2 ... Failure table, 3 ...
Operation history file, 4 ... Index information control unit, 5 ...
Input / output control unit, 6 ... Input device, 7 ... Display device, 8 ... CA
D system body, 9 ... trouble table.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification code Internal reference number FI Technical display location G06F 15/60 610A

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A CAD system main body, trouble analysis information storage means for storing information about troubles, trouble key information for indicating an operation or a combination of operations on the CAD system main body, and a trouble occurrence frequency, and a trouble occurrence frequency. The failure table based on the combination of the failure table configured by the importance based on the above, the operation history information storage unit that stores the operation for the CAD system body, and the operation or the operation up to and including the operation during the operation. It has a control means for referring to a table, selecting the corresponding trouble key information according to the degree of importance, and using the selected trouble key information to read and output the information on the trouble stored in the analysis information storage means. Characteristic CAD system. 2. A CAD system main body, a trouble analysis information storage means for storing information about troubles, an operation or combination of operations on the CAD system main body, and trouble key information for indicating the contents of the trouble, and an importance level. Failure table and the CAD
It is important to refer to the failure table based on a combination of an operation history information storage unit that stores an operation for the system main body and an operation at the time of occurrence of a trouble or an operation up to and including the operation, and the corresponding trouble key information is important. A CAD system comprising: control means for reading and outputting information on a trouble stored in the analysis information storage means by using trouble key information selected according to the degree and selected. 3. The degree of importance is calculated based on the frequency of troubles that have occurred in the past.
Alternatively, the CAD system according to item 2. 4. The importance level is updated based on a confirmation input of a trouble countermeasure performed by an operator based on the information about the trouble read by the control means, and the updated importance level. 4. The failure table is changed according to the degree.
The CAD system according to the item.