odop

Open Design Optimization Platform (ODOP) - Coil spring design app; mechanical springs; compression spring, extension spring, torsion spring

View the Project on GitHub thegrumpys/odop

Ideas for a web page menu structure

July 13, 2018 - Updated July 23, 2018

Menu Bar:

Current thinking has a conventional horizontal menu bar located at the top of the page. Five main menu items should look like:

Sys-Name File Action View Help

Menu Items:


Menu Item Descriptions:

Sys-Name : Web site

This menu item is a link to the public-facing web site. The linked page will open in a new browser tab.

File : Open

This menu item is similar to the PCyl-CLI START command. See issue #23 for additional detail on system (main web page) initialization.

File : Save

This menu item is similar to the PCyl-CLI Save command. It over-writes the most recently opened design file (.DSN) or database entry.

File : Save As

This menu item is similar to the PCyl-CLI Save command. It creates a new design file (.DSN) or database entry.

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File : Recent designs

These menu entries are provided for user convenience in selecting recent designs for review or additional work.

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File : System Preferences

This item provides a user interface to set system-specific values, including much of what is done by the PCyl-CLI SET command. For example, system internal variables such as IOOPT, OBJMIN, FIX_WT, etc. Other web-specific items, for example, auto re-calc and auto-search preferences, may be included.

Web page layout control should be handled in the View menu.

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Action : Search

This menu item invokes the Search - directly equivalent to the PCyl-CLI Search command. There may also be a search button on the main page. This menu item is provided primarily to maintain consistency.

Action : Seek

This menu item invokes Seek - directly equivalent to the PCyl-CLI Seek command. There may also be Seek button(s) on the main page. This menu item is provided primarily to maintain consistency.

Action : Trade

This menu item provides a similar feature to the PCyl-CLI Trade command. One possible implementation is to pop up a form where the user can specify a strategy (radio buttons similar to the current 0 - 3), over-ride step size and decide to keep the result or not.

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Action : Select Size

This menu item allows a table look-up for a standard size of a specific Independent Variable. It is similar to the PCyl-CLI SELECT command.

Action : Select Catalog

This menu item allows the selection of the "nearest" design from a catalog of standard designs. It is similar to the PCyl-CLI SELECT CATALOG command.

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Action : Execute

This menu item will trigger the play-back of a previously recorded sequence. A popup (?) can provide the user an opportunity to supply a (file?) name to specify the sequence. Some mechanism, for example, user supplied pauses will likely be necessary to allow the user to control the pace so as to observe what is happening. Annotations / comments are probably necessary. The process of creating play-back sequences (files?) is not required to be user accessible. If necessary, generic third party tools can be used to create and annotate play-back recordings.

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View : Define Sub-Problems

This menu item provides a user interface to control "IOCLASS" for independent and dependent variables plus "static quantities".

View : Display Sub-Problems

This menu item allows the user to specify a group of IOCLASSes be displayed. This frequently requested feature can allow complex design problems to be "partitioned" into sub-problems that map to sub-systems of the real world. Notably, selecting (check in checkbox?) classes 2, 4 & 6 would display those variables / quantities and suppress the display of all others.

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View : Report

This menu item creates a .PDF file and invokes the system .PDF utility to display it. Both generic (Independent & Dependent variables, constraint levels & violations, etc.) as well as problem-specific data in problem-specific formats can be included in the report. The user can use the features of the system .PDF utility in order to save the file into the browser's local file system.

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View : Calculation Inputs

A check in the checkbox will cause "calculation inputs" (previously known as "constants") to be displayed.

View : Violations

A check in the checkbox will cause both constraint violations and the value of the objective function to be displayed.

Help : Context Help F1

This menu item opens a new browser tab containing a context-specific web page describing the current task (for example, the Trade pop-up form). Hitting the F1 key produces the same result.

Help : Help Index

This menu item opens a new browser tab containing the index page for the Help subsystem. All Help topics should be reachable through links on the index page.

Help : Demo

This menu item provides the ability to select from a list of demo sessions which play back similarly to the Action : Execute menu item.
The demo sessions may include solutions to textbook problems in order to illustrate that the program closely matches published results.

Help : Tutorial

This menu item provides the ability to select from a list of tutorial sessions which play back similarly to the Action : Execute menu item.

Help : About

This menu item provides software release and design model version information. It also includes a link to the home page of publicly-facing web site (a repeat of the sys-name link). The linked page will open in a new browser tab.