This paper describes an editing system which is explicity designed to support the production of graphical representations of a software design. The novel features of the system are that it is table-driven, so that it may be tailored to support most graphical design notations, and that it explicity includes a means of defining the rules of the design method. These rules may be enforced automatically or checked at user request by the design editing system.
Furthermore, the system is intended to operate within the context of an integrated project support environment called ECLIPSE and the designs generated by the system are stored as objects in the ECLIPSE database. These objects have a defined structure and may be manipulated by other tools (such as a code generator). The editing system is implemented in C and runs on a Sun workstation.
Keywords Design diagram construction - Method description - Design checking - Design method support - Integrated Project Support Environment