SVG 2D Graphics Research
Engineering Diagrams Architecture

Engineering Diagrams

Anyone who can benefit from quality engineering diagrams oevr the web. And that means everyone in engineering. One of the great things about web graphics is their universality. You don't need a special software to view or print — just the web browser that came with your PC or notebook. It doesn't matter whether the user is in a meeting or on the shopfloor, they can get an up to the minute diagram using SVG.

This is not about systems based on mouse or tablet interaction. It's about truly automated diagrams. An order of magnitude more cost-effective than interaction. (Of course, automation is not always possible, and in those circumstances interactive graphics systems are appropriate.)

We are talking about complementary technologies here, not competitors.

These are fast, by the way. PenDraw is an ideal language for this kind of work. Not only does it produce small downloads that keep web speed up, but it is fast in itself.

Data can come either from existing systems for repetitive types of diagram, or direct keyboard entry for one-offs.

Assume that your server-side DP App is written in PHP (but it could be Perl, java, etc)

Your existing systems have the data.

1. Your PHP App retrieves the data from a current system
2. It passes the relevant data to a Graphics App (PenDraw is ideal) with the name of the file to put it into (using tempnam function to generate a unique file name)
3. The Graphics App produces SVG from the data passed to it, putting it into the file
4. The Graphics App terminates, which passes control back to the PHP App
5. The PHP App reads the SVG in the file (readfile function does it in one go), and produces all the XHTML (or HTML or XML), including the SVG as an <object> (and can include any number of diagrams, of course, with each diagram its own <object>).

That is effective engineering diagrams architecture.

Your user enters the data to an XHTML form.

1. Your PHP App collects that data
2. It passes it to a Graphics App with the name of the file to put it into (using tempnam function to generate a unique file name)
3. The Graphics App produces SVG from the data passed to it, putting it into the file
4. The Graphics App terminates, which passes control back to the PHP App
5. The PHP App reads the SVG in the file (readfile function does it in one go), produces all the XHTML (or HTML or XML), including the SVG as an <object> (and can include any number of diagrams, of course, with each diagram its own <object>).

Remember, your SVG graphics can also be interactive. Each graphical element can respond to the mouse, and you can program client-side in javascript or VBscript, and pass interactive moves made by the user back to another server-side script. The potential is enormous.

Remember, too, that any part of the SVG graphics picture can act as a hyper link, so you can construct documents that have rich semantic structures, and offer the user natural and helpful interfaces. You can relate engineering diagrams to one another, so for exploded diagrams showing parts, you can link to the very diagram that details the part — engineering diagrams architecture that works for you.