CIFER®-MATLAB Interfaces: Development and ... - Cal Poly

command-line-based interface that runs calculations and returns results as the user steps through
via prompting.
The three main programs for this project, FRESPID, MISOSA, and COMPOSITE, when run in
CIFER ® use the screen interface and have separate functions to store, retrieve, and compute
information. The MATLAB interface uses these same functions, however, to provide CIFER ® the
information without using the screen interface. The MATLAB structure that holds the case
information is set up to collect the same information that the user would normally provide
through the screens. All of this functionality was accomplished without modifying any original
CIFER ® code, thus no provisions will be necessary in order to maintain that original code when
the new interface is added to the full CIFER ® software package.
Other utilities such as the RMS, plotting, and arithmetic calculations have the screen interface
embedded within the functions that run the calculations. For the MATLAB interface to work, the
original CIFER ® functions had to be altered to disable the screen interface. These alterations are
well marked with comments as CIFER ® lead programmers will ultimately need to incorporate
new methods within existing code to accommodate the changes and prevent the need to maintain
two separate source files. The utilities that use the command-line interface (RMS, plotting, and
handling qualities) were dealt with much the same as the screen-based utilities due to the
command-line prompts being embedded within the code for calculations.
3.1.3 Complexity of Use
A side effect of the command-line interface was that it required users to be reasonably familiar
with CIFER ® . The interface is not as intuitive as a graphical interface because everything happens
at once. There are no screens with helpful notes and error checking to step through. If a case has
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