ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the facilities which a computer aided design (CAD) environment needs to offer engineering designers, and more specifically to control engineers. It suggests that such facilities are best provided by having a “smart” database management system as the core of a CAD environment. The chapter describes an environment which we have developed, which is based on these ideas; it is implemented by extending Prolog with database-like capabilities, to form a “database programming environment”. Computer support for engineering design must satisfy some requirements which are common to all specialisations. Most important is the fact that design must be supported, as well as analysis. The development of a “smart” database management system has enabled us to provide very powerful CAD facilities for control engineers. Any Object Oriented system should support the notions of Objects, Object Identity, Classes, and lnheritance.
