Computer Aided Architectural Design SIG

The SIG chaired by Professor Tom W Maver finalised its proposals for software development over the next five years in 1980:

1. a computer-aided architectural design applications software suite;
2. Access to a number of database management systems (AESOP, GLIDE, RAPPORT)
3. The development of a new modular system called DBOS and the provision of a system tutor to guide new users through the software.
4. A good interactive graphics environment; tools for constructing user interfaces; geometric modelling software to be developed by the Pre- and Post- Processing SIG
5. Access to powerful CPU (eg AP120B) for large-scale energy simulations

AESOP

AESOP, an architectural relational database, was developed and made available on the Bristol GEC 4085 by the group of Bob Phillips

AESOP was an architectural relational database aiming at integrating building design procedures and allowing both inexact and exact data. Information was in the form of components (linked lists of records) or relations (linked lists of tuples containing pointers to records). New relations could be defined interactively via set theoretic operations. The database also held internal procedures called maps which could be used to transform data as required by the user.

Details of some uses can be found in the paper AESOP: an architectural relational database by R.J.Phillips, M.J.Beaumont and D.Richardson. Computer Aided Design, vol 11, no. 4, (July 1979), There is also a book Geometry for CAAD, 1981, R J Phillips, M J Beaumont, D Richardson, J Bartley.

GLIDE: Graphical Language for Interactive Design

GLIDE was mounted on the DEC 10.

The system was designed by Charles Eastman at Carnegie Mellon University and implemented on the CMU Dec10 using Bliss.

GLIDE was an interpretive language with built-in solid modelling capabilities with permanent store of global variables. GLIDE allowed users to define new parametric primitives and attach attributes to them.

Subsequently GLIDE-II appeared, written in Pascal and later still this became CAEADS.

RAPPORT

RAPPORT was mounted on the relevant Prime systems. It was defined and implemented by R Weener at Delft University

DBOS

DBOS was purchased and installed on the Cambridge GEC 4070.

It was developed by Applied Research of Cambridge (ARC) from their computer-aided architectural design software OXSYS-BOS following a recommendation of the ICF Pre- and Post-Processors Working Party.

Data maintained by DBOS can be complex and variable in structure. A file security system protects databases against system malfunction and ensures that inter-linked files are kept in step. Databases may be large and long-lived. DBOS was designed to keep them compact while at the same time optimising data transfer between program and disc storage.