The Falcon Framework (or the Falcon Framework for Concurrent Design) was

Mentor Graphics Mentor Graphics Corporation was a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981, the company distributed products that ass ...

' second generation software environment. Whereas their original environment had been Pascal-based and ran exclusively on the

Apollo/Domain Apollo/Domain is a series of workstations that were developed and produced by Apollo Computer from to 1989. The machines were built around the Motorola 68k series of processors, except for the DN10000, which has from one to four of Apollo's RISC ...

platform, the Falcon Framework was written in C++ and was portable to other platforms, notably

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

. The Falcon Framework was marketed as a key technology for

concurrent engineering Concurrent engineering (CE) or concurrent design and manufacturing is a work methodology emphasizing the parallelization of tasks (i.e. performing tasks concurrently), which is sometimes called simultaneous engineering or integrated product develo ...

in the EDA realm. However, it was better characterized as a software

application framework In computer programming, an application framework consists of a software framework used by software developers to implement the standard structure of application software. Application frameworks became popular with the rise of graphical user inte ...

. The key components of the Falcon Framework were: *''UIMS'' - The User Interface Management System. Later dubbed the CUI for the Common User Interface, this component was built on the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

and featured an OSF/ Motif-like interface. *'' AMPLE'' - Advanced Mentor Programming LanguagE or Advanced Multi-Purpose LanguagE. A C-Like scripting programming language. *''DSS'' - Decision Support System. A

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

-like programming environment featuring many graphical widgets. *''DME'' - The Design Management Environment. A graphical tool known as The Design Manager for managing design components and The Registrar for editing the Falcon Frameworks registry. *''BOLD'' - An online documentation system. The primary application was the Bold Browser. *''EDDM'' - The Electronic Design Data Model. A connectivity-based data model for use with

' IDEA Station suite of tools. *''DDMS'' - The Design Data Management System. The underlying component management system providing object facilities for managing references, persistence, and versioning. Another key part of the Falcon Framework was the Open Door program. This program provided partners and customers with access to the software libraries and integration services. Open Door was an attempt to eliminate Mentor Graphics' reputation for proprietary products. The Falcon Framework was the key feature of

' 8.0 release and was initially released in 1991. Later developments included ''LMS'' (Library Management System) and ''iDM'' (integrated Design Manager). Subsequently, it has been ported to

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

. A particularly eccentric feature introduced in the Falcon Framework was mouse gestures using the middle mouse button. For example an operator could delete a CAD symbol by highlighting it with a left mouse button click, then pressing and holding the middle mouse button and drawing a large "D" across the screen. The gesture would appear in red color on top of the drawing and window system and disappear and get interpreted once the user released the middle mouse button again. Well Mouse gestures were present in the first generation software on Apollo Domain as well

References

{{reflist Electronic design automation software