Strategies for designing useful interfaces for software in high voltage applications and a case study of these principles applied to the alternative transients program (ATP).

Abstract

ATP (Alternative Transients Program) has beern used as a case study to show the dev elopment of strategies for writing usable and maintainable software in the High Voltage field. This was done by developing a graphical user interface (GUI) for ATP as a pre-processor to the program. The GUI was developed using modern software quality principles, as well as modem usability and maintainability trends including the use of object-oriented programming and design. The implementation of the GUI was performed by first writing the documentation for the program including the User Requirements Specifications, the User Reference Manual, and the Technical Reference Manual, and then coding the actual GUI, The implementation is shown to be successful in that the program is verv usable, easily maintainable, and adheres to internationally accepted standards for software. It is shown that the techniques used for this design can easily be used for other High Voltage software which suffers from setbacks similar to those of ATP.