New Object-Oriented PROGRES for Specifying the Conceptual Design Tool GraCAD

This paper deals with the application of graph transformations for the specification of conceptual design tools. We show how the graph rewriting system PROGRES is used for specifying the graph part of the conceptual method for architects in which functional requirements of the building to be designed are elicited by means of graph structures. The consistency of the specified requirements and whether a design matches those requirements is verified with graph constraint checkers. We consider how the new object-oriented extensions of the PROGRES language, i.e. packages and node objects with redefinable methods can be used to achieve the required constraint monitoring and preserving functions in the form of graph checker objects. The prototype for our method, called GraCAD, is created with UPGRADE - the recently developed Java framework for developing visual applications based on a PROGRES specification, and the commercial system for architects ArchiCAD.