Application Framework

The Application Framework uses an associativity engine to simplify the development of your CAD application.

Based on application/document architecture, it does this due to the following features:

- Application data is handled by the mechanism of attributes

- Attributes may be organized according to your development needs

- Multiple documents can be managed by an application

- Ready-to-use modeling data attributes common to CAD/CAM applications

- Data storage services

- A ready-to-use Undo-Redo and Copy-Paste functions

Since OCAF handles your application structure, your only major development task is the creation of application-specific data and GUIs. It is the organization of application data due to which OCAF differs from any other CAD framework. In OCAF, data structures are not shape-driven, but reference-key driven. In this respect, attributes such as shape data, color, material, are attached to a deeper invariant structure of a model than the shapes themselves. Then OCAF organizes and embeds these attributes in a document.

OCAF documents are in their turn managed by an OCAF application.

The topics are dealt with in the following chapters:

Data Attributes

Data Framework

Documents

Persistent Data Storage

A glossary is also provided to clarify key terms used when discussing OCAF.

Note: All OCAF packages are located in two tool-kits:

- Lite OCAF, contains AppStdL, TDocStd, TDataStd, TDF, TNaming packages. (assembled in the TKLCAF tool-kit)

- Presentation and Function mechanisms, contains AppStd, TPrsStd and TFunction packages (assembled in the TKCAF tool-kit)

This helps to significantly decrease memory use by applications that do not need visualization.