Supervisions                     design/modeling, IBM AT
3-D Design/Modeler Translates English and Chinese
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Supervisions from ATS Computercentre, an integrated two- and
three-dimensional design and modeling package, can translate
messages and prompts from English to Chinese and display in
Chinese, or in English and Chinese simultaneously, so your
drawings can be in either language.
 
The software knows that lines are linked together to form a
design, so, when you move a point or a line in a drawing,
Supervisions moves everything connected and associated with it
and then recomputes all geometrical properties.
 
For large projects, Supervisions gives you eight viewports
(windows) that you can use to show details at different
locations. When you start to join an item to another,
Supervisions understands what you are doing and connects them for
you. In addition, the software has an open architecture that lets
you link other applications to its kernel graphics system.
 
You can customize your own screen menus or tablet digitizers
and translate Supervisions into different languages.
Supervisions' programming language lets you write your own
application programs and send geometric information to numerical
control machines and computer-aided manufacturing software. You
can also use the programming language to create parametric
symbols that you can add to the drawing.
 
The built-in scientific calculator lets you perform simple or
complex mathematical calculations and then use the results
graphically or store them in variables for future reference.
 
You can attach non-graphical attributes to components and
assemblies with information such as parts numbers, descriptions,
properties revision dates, and prices, which you can use to
produce bills of materials and schedules. The software lets you
capture text information and use it to compile databases for your
drawings and models. You can also capture any set or screen
redraw instructions into a file and replay them at any time
either inside the main system or outside it.
 
The enquire facility lets you extract information from your
model or a list of attributes of the items. All information is
optionally routed through a built-in display editor that lets you
change the information, merge files of data, and save information
to your database.
 
Supervisions lets you use standard symbol libraries or ones of
your own to speed up your designs and increase efficiency. You
can use any drawing or three-dimensional model as a symbol and
access it directly from a disk. In this way, you can access
libraries without making copies of the original and be sure that
you have the most recent version. At any time, you can swap one
library of symbols for another.
 
Once you have composed a drawing you can send it to a range of
plotters, giving output of any sheet size up to A0, on
conventional pen plotters; the software also supports laser and
dot-matrix printers.
 
Two versions of the software are available. Supervisions 1000
gives you orthogonal projections including perspective generation
and quick color shading; you can design, model, and shade with up
to 16.7 million colors. Supervisions 3000 lets you customize your
own menus with its user-definable interface, create your own
macros, build more complex three-dimensional forms, and render
your designs with enhanced color shading or hidden line removal.
 
Supervisions is available in versions for DOS and Unix. The
system runs on the IBM AT with 640K bytes of RAM, an 80287 or
80387 math coprocessor, a 10-megabyte hard-disk drive, a
1.2-megabyte floppy-disk drive, a graphics card, a graphics
screen, and a mouse.
 
Price: $995 U.S. for Supervisions 1000; $2995 U.S. for
Supervisions 3000.
 
Contact: ATS Computercentre Pte. Ltd., 10 Anson Rd., #03-05/07
International Plaza, Singapore 0207, 65-2258311.
 
                              --- Martha Hicks
 
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