Electronic CAD Frameworks - 185

When it comes to frameworks, the familiar story of the elephant and the six blind philosophers seems to apply.

As each philoso- pher encountered a separate part of the elephant, each pronounced his considered, but flawed judgement.

One blind philosopher felt a leg and thought it a tree.

Another felt the tail and thought he held a rope. Another felt the elephant's flank and thought he stood before a wall.

We're supposed to learn about snap judgements from this alle- gory, but its author might well have been describing design automation frameworks.

For in the reality of today's product development requirements, a framework must be many things to many people. xiv CAD Frameworks: Integration Technology for CAD As the authors of this book note, framework design is an optimi- zation problem.

Somehow, it has to be both a superior rope for one and a tremendous tree for another.

Somehow it needs to provide a standard environment for exploiting the full potential of computer-aided engineering tools. And, somehow, it has to make real such abstractions as interoperability and interchangeability.

For years, we've talked about a framework as something that provides application-oriented services, just as an operating system provides system-level support. And for years, that simple statement has hid the tremendous complexity of actually providing those services.