The Design of Object-Oriented Software for the Representation of Mechanical Parts

Abstract The objective of this paper is to present a design of the software for the representation of a simple mechanical part using object oriented software construction techniques. The object oriented method of software construction is particularly suitable for representing complex mechanical parts, their dimensions and tolerances since modular and reusable software can then be obtained. The focus of this paper is to demonstrate through a simple example the software quality advantages that are obtained when abstract data types are used to describe classes of objects. The notion of inheritance is employed to show how a general software architecture can be designed for mechanical part representation. Finally, the Eiffel language is utilized as a design and specification tool to write the software specifications for the simple example studied. The software specification is developed using the axioms notion of the theory of abstract data types to specify the semantic properties of the object oriented software.