During the process of trying different design paths, a lot of intermediate data is generated, that is too volatile to be stored in a full-fledged data base, but nevertheless has to be maintained for a certain period of time during the exploration of the design space. These temporary - with respect to the time frame of the whole project - data are stored as evaluation instances, belonging to a given EVE. In addition to defining a standardized interface, EVE objects take care of some simple data management services for all evaluation instances (EVI) that have been created (Figure 8.10). Each EVI represents a point in the design space. Individual EVI s can be assigned to groups for convenient access for further processing. Groups are maintained by the EVE object and can be overlapping. Both groups and individual instances offer slots for recording the history of creation of the data point; slots are set automatically by design generators, or manually by the user. Together with its evaluation instances, an EVE offers rudimentary spread-sheet capabilities. In Section 8.10, a graphical user interface for accessing and managing EVI s is shown.
Figure 8.10:
Evaluation instance (EVI) objects are managed by EVE objects.