AUTO-LAY: Automatic Layout Generation for Procedure Flow Diagrams

Abstract

Nuclear Power Plant Procedures can be seen from essentially two viewpoints: the process and the information management. From the first point of view, it is important to supply the knowledge apt to solve problems connected with the control of the process, from the second one the focus of attention is on the knowledge representation, its structure, elicitation and maintenance, formal quality assurance. These two aspects of procedure representation can be considered and solved separately. In particular, methodological, formal and management issues require long and tedious activities, that in most cases constitute a great barrier for procedures development and upgrade. To solve these problems, Ansaldo is developing DIAM, a wide integrated tool for procedure management, to support in procedure writing, updating, usage and documentation. One of the most challenging features of DIAM is AUTO-LAY, a CASE subtool that, in a complete automatical way, structures parts or complete flow diagrams. This is a feature that is partially present in some other CASE products, that, anyway, do not allow complex graph handling and isomorphism between video and paper representation AUTO-LAY has the unique prerogative to draw graphs of any complexity, to section them in pages, and to automatically compose a document. This has been recognized in the literature as the most important second generation CASE improvement.