The Development of Windowed Interfaces to the ESATAN/FHTS Thermal Analysis System

The original ESATAN package was conceived in the early 1980's as a replacement for SINDA in the European space industry, and whilst structured analysis and design techniques were used in its development, the input and output modes remained those of its predecessor - namely sequential files. In recent years there has been considerable development of terminals supporting windowed and graphic environments, and increasing standardisation of the protocols to be used in interfacing to such hardware. This has led to an increasing demand for enhancement of the user interface to ESATAN/FHTS, making use of these technologies. This paper discusses the interfaces that have been developed for the ESATAN/FHTS system, and outlines the intentions for further development.