David Cuthbert wrote: > This does not mean the design itself should be stored as an RDBMS. As > I've stated previously, CAD data (both electrical and, it appears, > mechanical) does not lend itself to RDBMS relationship modeling.
I simply do not agree with this. A CAD program (like Autocad) is nothing but an advanced database editor: the program loads data from a binary file and creates its object (in memory) from the tables that it reads from the file on the disk. The point is that this could as well have been stored on tables in a RDBMS; the process of loading the object once the data has been fetched (either from a binary file, or a RDBMS) the process is similar. The advantage of having the data stored in a RDBMS is many, amongst them the ability to check-out just the data one needs, better administration of the drawings (consistent plotting, dimensioning styles, fonts, etc) and a much better tool for gathering statistics of the project (sums of areas, rooms, doors, etc etc). What happens in the CAD program (once loaded in memory) is simply irrelevant to how the data are stored. Regards, Baalbek -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
