What are the Types of interface

An interface can be regarded as an aggregate of conditions, rules and conventions which describes the information exchange, between two communicating objects. An object in our context can be human, software, modules, computer hardware or manufacturing processes. In principle, three types of interfaces can be distinguished including language interfaces, procedural interfaces and descriptive interfaces (Table ). The CAD system must be capable of exchanging data with the manufacturing system components are as shown. 

The language or user interface (Table ) is the window through which the user can communicate with the CAD module. The user employs the icons, pictorials, menus or textual languages to describe design and manufacturing problems. The textual languages are still the most important means of user/system communication. However, the interactive graphic languages are increasingly gaining importance, they are easier to learn and offer a more natural method of user/agent communication.  The procedural interfaces refer to language interfaces which are necessary to do the technical calculations, CAD modeling, process planning and machine programming. These interfaces may use subprograms, parameter descriptions or host languages to perform the individual CAD activities; thereby the host language concept is of particular importance. A host language is an existing language such as Fortran, C, C++ or VB etc. which has been extended to be able to handle specific constructs like the description of a circle. This is often done by calling subroutines. Procedural interfaces are also used to set up, in a generic way, the CAD configuration tobe used or to manipulate data of the CAD database.