ICES System Design

ICES (Integrated Civil Engineering System) is an engineering computer system designed to enable engineers to utilize digital computers effectively. It consists of subsystems corresponding to the various engineering discipline areas. The availability and integration of these subsystems allow engineers to achieve complete problem solutions where all factors and data interactions are properly considered. Each subsystem has a series of problem-oriented language commands associated with it. An engineer uses these commands to communicate his problem-solving requests to the computer.

Internally, each subsystem consists of a series of computer programs and subsystem data structure. The programs are structured to perform basic engineering operations and are written in ICETRAN, an engineering programming language. The basic operational ICES programs are linked together to execute the engineer's problem-solving requests. Several different program-linking mechanisms, both static and dynamic, are provided. An executive program reads and interprets an engineer's command and links to the appropriate subsystem ICETRAN programs.

ICES is dynamic from both an external and internal viewpoint. The problem-oriented language commands enable an engineer to specify the unique characteristics of each engineering problem. Dynamic data structures, dynamic program structures, and dynamics memory allocation programs are provided so that primary memory can be optimally used based on the current processing requirements.

ICES is a modular system designed to be adapted to the engineering needs of each organization, the computer hardware configuration of each organization, and the operating system provided by each computer manufacturer. ICES is a dynamic integrated system for civil engineering problem solving designed to satisfy the needs of programmers developing it and engineers using it.