Drag & Drop for Defining Hierarchy

摘要

An intuitive graphical interface on a computer allows a user to quickly and easily create and edit plant hierarchy templates, and/or plant hierarchies, without having to leave the graphical editing environment. Hierarchies may represent complex data structures, and the graphical interfaces allow editing and manipulation of their graphical forms while creating or maintaining such complex structures.

主权项

1. A graphical user interface for allowing a template editor to create a hierarchy template on a computer, for later user by a plant designer, the graphical user interface comprising:
at least one hierarchy template creation icon configured to create, when activated by a template editor, an editable hierarchy tile; a plant-group-type menu displaying a plurality of distinct plant-group-type icons, each of the plant-group-type icons representing a sub-area of a plant to be described by design files stored in a database, and configured for graphical selection by the template editor; a graphical editing interface configured to allow the template editor to edit an editable hierarchy tile to create a new hierarchy template, by:
selecting, from the plant-group-type menu, a first plant-group-type icon;graphically placing the first plant-group-type icon into the editable hierarchy template;selecting, from the plant-group-type menu, a second plant-group-type icon;graphically placing the second plant-group-type icon into the editable hierarchy template, such that the second plant-group-type icon is graphically subordinate to the first plant-group-type icon in a tree structure, andsaving the new hierarchy template to a computer memory.