Dia bond graph design interface

[johnsonjh]

• Transferred from https://sourceforge.net/p/mtt/feature-requests/15/
  • Status: open
  • Owner: Peter Gawthrop
  • Labels: Core mtt (12)
  • Priority: 5
  • Updated: 2003-05-19
  • Created: 2003-05-19
  • Creator: David Hoover
  • Private: No

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It would be nice to be able to draw hierarchical bond graphs using the Dia diagram editor. This will provide
the following advantages:

• When ports are moved, bonds and bond labels will follow automatically. Bonds will never collide with
  components.
• Will be possible to construct hierarchical bond graphs using either .fig or .dia diagrams.
• Bond connectivity, causality, and labels will be structural properties, stored as XML in the dia file. Unconnected bonds will appear differently from connected bonds. Will not be necessary to check
  connectivity using a stripped acausal bond graph because there will be no ambiguity in the bond graph
  representation.

Modifications to Dia have been written which interact with mtt for non-hierarchical bond graphs. This works just fine. In the mtt list, Geraint presents some ideas about how to do hierarchical bond graphs with
Dia. It would be nice for us to pursue these ideas.

I am writing this 'feature request' to:

• Get this project rolling again after several hectic months during which I quit working on this project.
• Indicate to prospective contributors that they can contact me at my sourceforge e-mail address if they
  wish to have the modified dia code for mtt/dia development.

David Hoover.

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Reply from Geraint Paul Bevan - 2004-07-23:

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Hi Dave,

I think I finally have -ibg working for hierarchical bond graphs (it took a long time, sorry). The (*_abg.m) files produced with or without using -ibg are now identical so everything should(!) work for hierarchical bond graphs built with Dia (or even Dia/Xfig hybrids, I think). At least, it should all be ready for testing and fixing.

The changes that you made to Dia don't seem to have made it into the Debian build (v0.93). Are the latest changes available in the Dia CVS repository or does the code need to be patched?

The latest patches that I am aware of are those at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/2002-November/msg00109.html

If you sent me any more recent ones, I'm afraid I will have lost them - I've had a couple of hard drive failures and the Sourceforge lists don't seem to keep attachments.

I tried building Dia from CVS last night (without applying any patches) but without success - I'll try again in a few days.

Geraint.

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