POsT: an architectural model for interactive simulation interfaces design

User interfaces for work-station applications are inherently difficult to build. One of the major difficulties appears in the management of the man-machine dialogue and the control of the user actions within the simulation. It follows the necessity to construct the interface based on a model of architecture with a structure that is adapted to different needs of the man-machine interaction. In this paper, an architectural model for interactive simulation interfaces design, POsT (Presentation, Simulation Object, Translator), is presented. This model is constituted from three parts: an abstract part using a constraints based modelling that allows a broad range of industrial system description, a visual part that insures the graphical presentation aspect of the represented physical object (displaying and animation), the third part is used to link the two components