Monday 18th July
Scaling, styles and the cloud – Tony Bryer, Greentram Software
Tony talked about the work he’d done on Greentram’s three structural engineering applications over the last couple of years. Key topics
Scaling: With the onset of 4K screens and very high resolution screens on laptops, scaling is now more important. Delphi’s handling of scaling has evolved with each release, as has Windows’ (n.b. Windows 8.1 has some key changes over 8.0). The key thing is to test, test and test at each likely resolution. Three very helpful resources can be found at
Styles: Delphi introduced styles with XE2, but with some key limitations which have been addressed in subsequent releases. Even on business applications like Greentram’s, styles can enhance application’s interface significantly. Following user feedback, a few small changes had to be made, principally allowing users to override the default font in dialogs.
The Cloud: Not Delphi, but a browser-based lite version of Greentram’s EuroBeam program, EuroBeam.net, has been developed and made available to users of the desktop application who have current update cover. The server side is written in Python+Flask and is hosted by pythonanywhere.com, with the client side using HTML, CSS and Javascript. REST interfaces allow user accounts to be updated from a Delphi client.
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“Vector/Matrix operation on CAD API’s” – Brian Watson from Desktop EDA
Desktop EDA produces software that works between mechanical and electronic CAD programs. In the early days users produced there own library of component 3D models. Now these component models are available from other sources but often their coordinate system does not align with that of the user. Brian explained the Matrix operations required to align and then maintain that status during multiple CAD API interactions.