Software Engineering & Ich

GUI: How to use the application
Before we are going into deeper details we want to show you how you can start the application with our GUI.
First if you are going to start the application the “Configure Building” frame will become visible to you.
In this window you have the possibility to configure your elevator system.

%Show an image of the building configuration screen

This window is divided into four different parts. The first part is really easy.
Here we display some text information for the end user.
This is maybe not enough information but in the case if it is too difficult this documentation could be a good starting point.
In the next section you can see the available elevators.
If you have plugged in one or more hardware elevators so they are visible in the left drop down box.
All hardware elevators are displayed with a unique number. Here it is also possible to add as many simulated elevators as you want.
To do this you have to press the button “Add Simulated”. After pressing the button the simulated elevators are visible in the drop down box.
So if you now want to add these elevators to the application you have to select them in the drop down box and press the button “Submit”.
After that they are visible in the next section.

%Show an image of the building configuration screen 2
%Here are know the elevators added

Now we have added different simulated elevators by clicking the submit button.
We will now have a closer look at the third section of the configuration screen.
This part is also really interesting because here you can configure all details of a single elevator.
If you click on a single elevator in the list you will see the details of the selected elevator in the right section of this box.
%Show an image of the building configuration screen 3
%Here are know the elevators added an we have clicked on a added elevator

You have now the possibility to configure the starting floor and the end floor of the selected elevator.
It is possible to enter negative values, because it is possible that a building is having a cellar.
You can also chose a shaft group for the selected elevator.
This is really important because a shaft different shaft group mean that two different elevators in two different
shaft groups handle independent of each other. Later you will see that it is possible to give every different
shaft group a different strategy. It is also possible to delete an elevator. In this case the elevator will be back
in the selection panel and it would not be shown later in the GUI.

The GUI tries to catch malformed input data. So if you enter text in the floor fields you will get an error message
“Please type only numbers. No text allowed in here”. But there are still tasks open. So it is possible to enter
freely the shaft group number but is important that you will start with zero and count the numbers up yourself.
This needs to be fixed before this system can go into production mode.

With a click on the “Start” button the magic will happen and a elevator system will be shown by a brand new GUI.