An end-user oriented approach to design man-machine interfaces for CAD/CAM

This paper describes the design, the specification and the implementation of a new type of graphical system, SACADO, for designing a dialog architecture. This system is an adaptative system for computer aided design and development. Thus, it can be considered as: a CAD/CAM tool, and a basis of CAD/CAM systems development. Features of the system include a hierarchical structure of the dialog with special effects of menus and a capability to allow immediate modification of the dialog specifications. This original approach, based on different kinds of menus and a single interaction, permits an end-user to design interfaces for CAD/CAM systems without any knowledge in computer science. Moreover, an overview is included on the technique used in the implementation of the dialog interpreter, which involves an intensive use of syntactic grammars