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Section: New Results
Software engineering
SAMSON's architecture
Participant : Stéphane Redon.
The data model of SAMSON has been expanded. The goal is to represent a nanosystem as the union of several interacting models: structural models (geometrical and topological information, to define relationships between structural elements), dynamical models (to define kinematical and dynamical relationships between structural components), interaction models (to define physical interactions between dynamical components, e.g. forces between atoms or rigid bodies), and visual models (visual representations, for user interaction).
All models are part of the data graph, which contains all the information related to the system being modeled. The referencing system has been significantly expanded, with data structures to safely handle objects creation and deletion. An event mechanism has been designed and added to SAMSON, so that nodes of the data graph may send messages to each other. These messages can be related to topological changes, structural changes, dynamical changes, etc.
SAMSON's software engineering process
Participants : Jocelyn Gaté, Stéphane Redon.
SAMSON's software development process has been much improved. CMAKE is used to ensure that all parts of SAMSON may easily be built on several platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux). Thanks to CMAKE, a variety of Integrated Development Environments may be used (Visual Studio, Eclipse, XCode, etc.).
CTEST and CDASH are used to test SAMSON, and the Pipol platform has been used to perform nightly builds.
Graphical User Interface design
Participants : Jocelyn Gaté, Stéphane Redon.
Several functionalities have been added to the graphical interface of SAMSON, including customizable toolbars (that plug-in developers will be able to modify), as well as a data graph view (Figure 15 ).
Also, because plug-ins might have complex interfaces and settings, a mechanism to save and load custom presets has been developed (Fig. 16 ).
