Reference Project: New User Interface for Simulation Tool
Soil.NET is a port of an old
DOS application written in
Pascal to the
.NET framework. It is a one-off programming project for the
civil engineering office Steinhauser, who are useing the application to support writing expertises in the area of vibration protection and seismology. While the mathematical core could be taken almost literally, the use of a modern GUI toolkit
WPF enabled important improvements in user interface experience:
- Free data entry: the DOS application only allowed sequential input. The WPF implementation not only enables free entry and correcting of parameters, but also displays the results immediately to the user. The feedback allows users to test more combinations of parameters in the same time.
- Model comparisons: as with data entry, models could only be input sequentially. Single typos thus lead to having re-type the whole dataset. The new implementation allows models to be input independently and to choose, display, and print different charts and combinations without having to re-enter any data.
- Graphical quality: the DOS application was restricted to 640×480 pixels on screen and when printing. Of course this doesn’t meet current expectations and is noted negatively when including the graphics in expertises and similar documents. Trhough using the ZedGraph library, graphics can be created in arbitrary resolutions and print outs conform to the specifications of the printer and the used paper formats.
Finally a
printed page and a screenshot of the complete application:
