XML BASED FILE STORAGE FORMAT FOR COLLABCAD SOFTWARE

Abstract

The CollabCAD is a prototype CAD package being developed in Java Programming language, incorporating- a distributed three-tier architecture. It is intended to include the possibilities opened up by Java to run programs in platform independent distributed environments. Once developed, CollabCAD will be the only package of its kind using this technology. This package is meant for CAD/CAM/CAE application. The main feature of this application is that it runs on a distributed environment. The application is based on client server architecture. The servers can be located at different remote places and accessed by clients sitting in some other place via the Internet. CollabCAD version 1.5.5 has recently been released. The CollabCAD files were initially being stored as Java Serialization files. These files will not be readable straight away when we move into CollabCAD 2.0 because of possible structural changes to almost all entities. Also for all practical purposes the storage formats for CollabCAD is binary format only. A need for ASCII file format was felt which could be manually edited to revive from any programming fault or otherwise. After the user creates his part he also has an option of exporting it as IGES/STEPNRML/STL file. These files when exported to another application leads to loss of data and other complexities. To overcome these shortcomings an XML based file storage format was proposed which is an ASCII format and is easily readable. This thesis reports the work done by me to store the CollabCAD files in XML format and the implementation of an XML Reader that parses the stored XML files and recreates the saved entities. The XML Parser being used is the SAX Parser which processes the XML files to recreate the saved entities.