Master's Thesis - Computer Graphics and Visualization - TU Delft

3.3 The Concept Editor
3.3.1 Description
The Concept Editor will guide the users in “concept” level to do programming. “Concept” here refers
to the architecture of a program. In general, architecture of a program means the components of this
program and the interaction among these components. The concept editor will show the predefined
architecture of a program to users and guide the user to fill some necessary components in a proper
position.
This
model is not suited to a general purpose programming environment. Because the system can not
predict the architecture of a program a user wants to build. But the Culgi GPE is designed for the users
to make simulation program with the Culgi Library. As we mentioned in Chapter 2, the Culgi
simulation program in general contains three steps: 1) create molecules, 2) create windows to show the
molecules, 3) set the properties of molecules and start the simulation. And for each step, there are
several modules which appear in almost all the simulation programs (we call these modules as the
“necessary modules” in this step). So it is possible to integrate the architectures of the Culgi simulation
programs into the system. Because the three components in this architecture are linear sequence, we
will call it the pipeline of a program.
3.3.2 Application to the Culgi Library
Simulation programs which are composed of Culgi Commands can be divided into several types, such
as “DPD Simulation”, “MesoDyn Simulation”, “MD Simulation” and “Hybrid Simulation”. Although
the simulation programs of Culgi have common architectures, differences still exist among various
kinds of simulation programs. For example, the architecture of “DPD simulation” programs is different
from the one “Mesodyn simulation” programs. The difference is that in each step of those three, the
“necessary modules” are different. So to integrate a general architecture is not a good solution.
Instead,
we can make the special structure to each kind of simulation programs as a template. Take
“DPD Simulation” as an example, the program doing DPD simulation includes three parts; they are 1)
‘Build Box’ (Create a cube space for simulation, and add molecules into this box), 2) ‘Set Viewer’ (set
the properties of the graphics window, and add the modules the users want to see in the window), and 3)
‘DPD simulation’(set the simulation properties including the properties of molecules and the properties
of the simulation process ). In each of these three parts, there must be some modules which are needed
in every DPD simulation program. So the template of “DPD Simulation” programs will show the three
parts to the users and integrate the necessary modules in these three parts by default.
To
show the template and to integrate the necessary modules in each component of the template are two
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