A web-based computer-aided pneumatic circuit design software

Abstract

A web-based collaborative pneumatic software is created to assist users on the computer-aided pneumatic circuit design. The software is developed in the form of Java application and Java applet. Therefore, it can be used in any computer with Java virtual machine or be accessed by a web browser over the internet. This software allows user to conduct pneumatic circuit design by (1) applying the circuit components on menu bar to draw the pneumatic devices, (2) connecting the devices with signal lines, (3) filling in the parameters for all the devices and finally, (4) simulating the designed circuit. To provide better simulation results for each device, separate threads are used to perform continuous scans to each component. Therefore, the actions of the pneumatic devices and circuits can be simulated throughout the design phases. The circuit design results can be saved either on each local disk for Java application users or on web-based databases for collaborative users. During a collaborative mode, the user who owns the token will dominate the circuit design process while the other users can only monitor the consequences. The token can be passed around the users on a collaborative scheme. Since the software is designed in Java, all pneumatic devices were designed as component based objects to allow user defined devices to be incorporated into the software in a systematic way.