JPH07296046A - Drawing editing support system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the editing efficiency of a drawing by reusing an existed drawing and to make the performance of a drawing editing support system high. CONSTITUTION:This system is provided with an editing information registration processing part 6 for adding a new drawing object, the element graphic type of an existed adjacent drawing object and a character string content to correspond to the generation degree of the drawing object by adding position information and registering them in an editing information table 3a, a drawing pattern registration processing part 7 for adding a drawing identifier to information of the editing information table 3a and regsitering it in a drawing information file 4a when editing terminates, an objective drawing display processing part 8 for retrieving the drawing information file 4a based on the disignation of an area being the object of editing by reusing the drawing and reading/ displaying all the existed drawings including the same constitution as the respective graphic objects in the designated area and an editing screen switch processing part 9 for exchanging the contents of the display drawing and the editing information table 3a for the content of the selected existed drawing. Then, an editing support processing for the selected drawing is continued.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a technique for interactively editing a drawing by reusing information of an existing drawing using a computer, and more particularly, to CASE (case, Comput
er Aided Software Engineer
ring) tool, such as a data flow diagram and a system flow diagram, which efficiently supports the editing of a drawing including a prepared figure and a character string input by the operator corresponding to each figure. The present invention relates to a suitable drawing editing support system.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A drawing to be edited by a computer has a predetermined figure as an element figure, such as a data flow chart or a system flow chart created by a CASE tool. There is a drawing object which is composed of a character string input in association with this elemental figure. When editing a drawing consisting of such drawing objects, for example,
"Interface '91 -5 No. 168 / Separate volume appendix" (1991, CQ publishing company) Nos. 11 and 12
Similar to the reuse of parts in CAD described on page, the existing drawing information can be reused. That is, a drawing portion that is often used is registered in advance as a pattern, and the operator can select the pattern according to the selection condition and edit the drawing by using the selected pattern. As the pattern to be reused, the standard pattern provided by the system is prepared. However, this standard pattern alone is not enough to reuse the existing drawing information. In such a case, the user himself The pattern to be reused can be added or changed by.

However, since the system does not prepare a condition for determining what is to be a reuse pattern, the user himself has to identify a frequently used pattern and register it as a reuse pattern. It is a work load for the user. In addition, in order to select a pattern to be reused for editing from the patterns registered in this way, a selection condition consisting of conditional statements is necessary. Although provided by the system side, when a new pattern to be reused is added, the user himself / herself must register a new selection condition (conditional sentence) in response to this additional pattern. if,
If this selection condition is unsuccessful, it becomes impossible to select a pattern to be reused in editing, so this selection condition is very important. Therefore, the registration of the selection condition for this additional pattern is a heavy work load on the user.

[0004]

The problems to be solved by the prior art are that, in the prior art, not all patterns in the edited drawing can be automatically registered as reusable patterns, and the figures and figures forming the drawing are The point is that the character string itself cannot be used as a selection condition for reuse.
An object of the present invention is to solve the problems of the prior art, eliminate the need for registering a drawing pattern to be reused, and the registration of a selection condition when reusing this drawing pattern, and reusing an existing drawing. An object of the present invention is to provide a drawing editing support system capable of improving the drawing editing efficiency.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, the drawing editing support system of the present invention provides a drawing object consisting of an element graphic forming a drawing and a character string input in association with the element graphic. Each time it is created through the edit processing unit (5), the type of the element graphic of the created new drawing object and the content of the character string, and the element graphic type of the existing drawing object adjacent to this new drawing object And the character string contents are shown in association with each other, and edit information indicating the positional relationship between the existing drawing object and the new drawing object is generated and registered in the table (edit information table 3a) in the main storage device (3). At the end of editing the drawing, the information registration processing unit (6) adds the identification information of the edited drawing to the information in the editing information table (3a) to obtain the drawing information. The drawing information file (7) which is created and registered in the auxiliary storage device (4) as a file (drawing information file 4a), and the drawing information file (7) based on the designation of the area including a plurality of graphic objects in the drawing being edited. 4a), and the target drawing display processing unit (8) for reading out and displaying on the screen all existing drawings including the same graphic object configuration as the configuration of each graphic object in the specified area
Then, only the drawing selected from the existing drawings displayed on the screen is displayed on the screen, and the edit information table (3a) registered in the main storage device (3) corresponds to the existing drawing displayed on the screen. An editing screen switching processing unit (9) for replacing the contents of the editing information table in the drawing information file (4a) is provided, and the editing support process for the selected drawing is continued.

[0006]

According to the present invention, each time a drawing object consisting of element figures and character strings is created, a pattern consisting of a new drawing object and existing drawing objects adjacent to the new drawing object can be reused. Register as a pattern. As a result, all the drawing objects forming the drawing can be reused with the pattern consisting of the two drawing objects as the minimum unit. The information for identifying this pattern consists only of the correspondence between the element figure types of both objects and the contents of the character string, and the mutual positional relationship between both drawing objects, and is represented by a small amount of data. The size of the information file can be reduced. When the operator designates an arbitrary area of the drawing being edited for reuse of the drawing, the drawing information file is searched, and first, the portion that matches the combination of each editing information in the designated area is included. All the editing information is found, then the drawing is specified from the identification information of these editing information, and further, all the specified drawings are read out for reuse and displayed on the screen.
Then, when the operator selects and designates a target drawing from the displayed drawings, only the selected drawing is displayed and the content of the editing information table is changed to the content of the selected drawing. As a result, the figures and the character strings themselves that compose the drawing can be used as selection conditions for reuse. Further, by continuing to edit the selected and displayed drawings based on the operation by the operator, for example, there are many drawings specified as objects to be reused and they are inclusive relation with each other, and the optimum drawing can be specified. Even when it is difficult to specify the optimum drawing, it is possible to specify the optimum drawing easily by repeating the area designation and the selection designation while gradually increasing the scale.

[0007]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the configuration of the drawing editing support system of the present invention according to the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a terminal having a keyboard and a display screen, 1a is a mouse used for main input / output operations in this embodiment, 2 is a computer having a CPU for performing data processing according to the present invention, and 3 is a computer 2 In the figure, a main storage device 4 connected by an internal bus is an auxiliary storage device for storing processing results of the computer 2, usage data and the like. The computer 2 operates the terminal 1 based on the CPU operation.
An edit processing unit 5 that edits a drawing in an interactive manner with an operator via an operator, an edit information registration processing unit 6, a drawing pattern registration processing unit 7, and a target drawing that perform processing related to reuse of the drawing of the present invention. The display processing unit 8 and the edit screen switching processing unit 9 are included.

When the operator starts editing the drawing via the terminal 1, the computer 2 edits the drawing in an interactive manner with the operator via the terminal 1 by the editing processing section 5. That is, the edit processing unit 5 selects and displays an element graphic based on an operation input from the terminal 1 and inputs a character string attached to the element graphic to draw a drawing object including the element graphic and the character string. And create and edit drawings by this combination. In this way, each time the edit processing unit 5 creates a drawing object, the edit information registration processing unit 6 adjoins the created new drawing object element graphic type and character string content and the new drawing object. The edit information table in the main storage device 3 is generated by showing the element graphic type and the character string content of the existing drawing object in association with each other and generating the edit information indicating the positional relationship between the existing drawing object and the new drawing object. Register with 3a. As a result, in the editing information table 3a, all the drawing objects that make up the drawing are registered in association with each other in a pattern unit composed of two drawing objects.

When the operator inputs an instruction to end drawing editing from the terminal 1, the drawing pattern registration processing unit 7 adds the identification information of the edited drawing to the information in the editing information table 3a to generate drawing information and assists. It is registered in the drawing information file 4a in the storage device 4. As a result, the drawing information file 4a
All the drawing objects that make up the drawing are registered as reusable, with a pattern consisting of two drawing objects as the minimum unit. Further, the edit information registered in the edit information table 3a and the drawing information file 4a, as will be described in detail later, associates the element graphic types of both drawing objects with the character string contents and the mutual position of both drawing objects. It consists only of relationships and is represented by a small amount of data. As a result, the sizes of the edit information table 3a and the drawing information file 4a can be reduced.

In this way, the operator can reuse the existing drawing for editing the drawing while the editing information is registered in the drawing information file 4a. That is, the operator
In the drawing being edited, if the area to be edited by reusing the existing drawing is designated by the mouse 1a, the computer 2
Is the edit information table 3 by the target drawing display processing unit 8.
Extract all the editing information in the specified area from a,
The drawing information file is searched by using the entire structure of the editing information as a key, all existing drawings including the editing information of the same structure are read out and displayed on the screen of the terminal 1. When the operator selects one of the target drawings from these existing drawings and designates it through the terminal 1, the edit screen switching processing section 9 displays only the selected drawing on the screen and displays the selected screen. The edit information is read from the drawing information file 4a, and the registered content of the edit information table 3a is replaced with this edit information. After that, the operator continues to edit the selected existing drawing. In this way, the operator can use the figures and the character strings themselves that compose the drawing as selection conditions for reuse.

The operation according to the present invention will be described below by taking an example of editing a data flow diagram. It should be noted that the connection relation between two drawing objects is expressed by a binary relation.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an operation example according to the present invention of the drawing editing support system in FIG. When drawing editing is instructed from the terminal, editing is started (step 2
1). That is, the edit screen is displayed, element graphics are selected, and character strings are added. As a result, the data flow diagram shown in FIG. 3 is displayed on the screen as a drawing being edited.
Here, the character strings of "order reception" and "issue reception slip" are in a rectangular element figure indicating "processing" (process), and an arrow-shaped element indicating the flow direction (flow) between "processes". The word "reception form" is entered on the figure.

An example of the contents of the edit information table 3a in FIG. 1 in which the information of this edit screen is registered is shown in FIG. 4. Here, since the data flow is in one direction, the upstream is left, The downstream is expressed as the right, and, for example, as the editing information about the “order receiving rectangular element figure” and the “arrow-shaped element figure” in FIG. 3, “process” and “left character” are entered in the “left element figure” item. "Order reception" in the "Column" item, and "Flow" in the "Right element figure" item
"Reception slip" is registered in each item of "right character string". When reusing an existing drawing in order to further edit the drawing shown in FIG. 3, the operator uses the mouse 9 in FIG. 1 to specify the range to be edited (step 22). FIG. 5 shows how the range is specified on the edit screen in this way, and FIG. 6 shows the corresponding part in the corresponding edit information table. Here, all drawing objects of the edited drawing shown in FIG. 3 are designated.

When the edit target range is designated in this way,
All the drawings partially including the editing information having the same configuration as that shown in FIG. 6 are read from the drawing information file 4a in FIG. 1 and displayed on the screen of the terminal (step 23).
The drawing including the edit information portion designated in FIG. 6 is shown in the drawing information file 4a in FIG.
7A and 7B, and each portion surrounded by "drawing identifiers A to C" in FIG. 7 is a portion that matches the portion designated in FIG. The read drawings A, B, C
The display result (from the top) is shown in FIG. Based on the instruction of the operator, the optimum one to be used for editing is selected from the displayed drawings (step 24). Here, the drawing (C) enclosed in FIG. 8 is selected. Further, as a result of this selection, the contents of the edit information table in FIG. 4 before the selection of the candidate are as shown in FIG.
Is replaced with the editing information of drawing (C) in FIG.

Based on the operation input from the operator, the drawings selected and replaced are corrected (step 25). FIG. 10 shows the edit screen of the correction result. After the “credit confirmation” process, the downward arrow-shaped element graphic and the “data storage” process to which the character string “error information” is added are displayed. The rectangular element shape shown has been added. Further, FIG. 11 shows the contents of the editing information table after the modification of the editing screen, and the editing information in the first and second rows from the bottom is added to the table contents in FIG. When the end of editing is instructed (step 26), the contents of the editing information table shown in FIG. 11 are stored in the drawing information file (step 27), and the editing process is ended (step 2).
8). FIG. 12 shows the storage result, and the system automatically gives a unique drawing identifier to a drawing to be newly stored. Here, it is registered as drawing D. In this way, even when an existing drawing is reused for editing, the result is reflected in the editing information table and finally stored in the drawing information file, and becomes a new selection candidate.

It is also possible to return from step 25 to step 22 and continue the editing work by reusing the drawing shown in FIG. 10 for the drawing being edited. Further, instead of designating the entire range of the drawing being edited as shown in FIG. 5, a part of it can be designated. Further, also in the case of selecting the drawings shown in FIG. 8, a part of the display drawings can be similarly selected and designated. In any case, the result is reflected in the edit information table. That is, the drawings and the editing information table are partially exchanged. In this way, range designation for searching for drawings to be reused,
The degree of freedom can be given in any of the specifying operations for selecting the optimum reuse drawing.

As described above with reference to FIGS. 1 to 12, in the drawing editing support system of this embodiment, all drawing objects created at the time of editing a drawing are registered as reusable ones and existing Based on the designation of the area of the editing portion for reusing the drawing, all the drawings that can be reused are read and displayed. As described above, by making all existing drawings reusable, it is possible to reduce existing drawing information that is not reused and improve the reuse of drawings. By improving the reuse of drawings, it is possible to improve the efficiency of the drawing editing work by increasing the accuracy in searching for the drawings to be reused. Further, it is not necessary to register the pattern to be reused and the pattern selection condition in advance, and the operator does not have to decide which pattern is to be reused. It is possible to improve the efficiency of reusing an existing drawing in editing a drawing composed of rows and reduce the load on the operator involved in the editing work.

The present invention is not limited to the embodiment described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 12, and various modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the invention. For example, in the present embodiment, the connection relationship between drawing objects is held as a binary relationship in the edit information table, and the connection relationship between the left drawing object and the right drawing object is stored between the two drawing objects. However, the item indicating the positional relationship between the two drawing objects may be provided after the item corresponding to the element graphic and the character string. In this case, the item indicating the positional relationship is
Not only "right, left", but also information such as "up, down, diagonal" can be used, and can be applied to editing a flowchart.

[0018]

According to the present invention, all the patterns in the edited drawing can be automatically registered as reusable patterns, and the figures and the character strings themselves forming the drawing can be selected as conditions for reuse. Since it is not necessary to register the drawing pattern to be reused and the selection condition for reusing this drawing pattern, it is possible to improve the editing efficiency of the drawing by reusing the existing drawing. It is possible to improve the performance of the drawing editing support system.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a configuration according to the present invention of a drawing editing support system of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an operation example of the drawing editing support system in FIG. 1 according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a screen display example of a data flow diagram during editing.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of registered contents of an editing information table corresponding to the data flow diagram in FIG.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of designating a drawing to be edited by reusing an existing drawing.

6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of registered contents of an edit information table designated corresponding to the drawing designation in FIG. 5;

7 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of registered contents of a drawing information file that matches the example of registered contents in FIG.

8 is an explanatory diagram showing a display example of a drawing to be reused corresponding to each registered content of the drawing information file in FIG. 7 and an example of a selection situation of an optimum reuse drawing.

9 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of registered contents of an edit information table corresponding to the drawing selected and displayed as the optimum reuse drawing in FIG. 8. FIG.

10 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a correction situation for the drawing selected and displayed as the optimum reuse drawing in FIG. 8. FIG.

11 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of registered contents of an edit information table corresponding to the corrected drawing in FIG.

12 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of registered contents of the drawing information file after the editing of the corrected drawing in FIG. 10 is completed.

[Explanation of symbols]

1: terminal, 1a: mouse, 2: computer, 3: internal storage device, 3a: edit information table, 4: external storage device, 4a: drawing information file, 5: edit processing unit, 6: edit information registration processing unit, 7: Drawing pattern registration processing unit, 8:
Target drawing display processing unit, 9: edit screen switching processing unit

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A drawing editing support system for supporting drawing editing on a screen by reusing information of an existing drawing,
Each time a drawing object is created that is made up of the element graphic forming the drawing and the character string input in association with the element graphic, the type of the element graphic and the content of the character string of the created new drawing object , The element drawing type and the character string content of the existing drawing object adjacent to the new drawing object are shown in association with each other, and edit information indicating the positional relationship between the existing drawing object and the new drawing object is generated. Editing information registration processing means for registering a table in a storage device, and drawing pattern registration processing for generating drawing information by adding identification information of the drawing to the table information at the end of editing the drawing and registering the file in the auxiliary storage device. Based on the means and the designation of the area containing multiple figure objects in the drawing being edited, the above drawing information file is searched and the above designation is performed. Object drawing display processing means for reading out and displaying on the screen all existing drawings including the same graphic object structure as the structure of each graphic object in the area, and displaying only the drawing selected from the existing drawings being displayed on the screen, Edit screen switching processing means for replacing the edit information table registered in the main storage device with the edit information table of the contents of the drawing information file corresponding to the existing drawing to be displayed on the screen, and editing the selected drawing A drawing editing support system characterized by continuing support processing.