🎯 Purpose

«Layout Windows»™ software, first released in the early 1990's, is a universal program to develop VLSI masks and PCB layers, schematic and other drafts. It is one of the first EDA applications in the industry where many progressive ideas have been implemented:

1. Processing of hierarchical data benefits from multi-window user interface. It allows simultaneous work with many nodes of the data graph. It permits partial views of the same node. Typical applications back then used a single window. This limitation required frequent reloading of data. Multi-window presentation solved this problem.
2. Variety of computing platforms (software plus hardware) on the market never shrank. Such diversity doesn't create big volume of changes on transition between platforms when architecture of software design follows multi-layered concept. Each software layer separates its callers from details of own implementation. Only bottom layer software may require re-writing the code. However, typical applications back then used so called monolith approach: bottom layer API was usually called from everywhere. When moving on, entire application went under re-design. Approach, introduced in this application, followed a strict rule: no calls jumping across layers. This solution dramatically saves budget and time.
3. Layer-based architecture of software matures into a form where some parts of it start to hold features that are common across wide variety of applications. In contemporary software this approach got the name «Model-View-Controller». Back then, a typical application used entangled series of API calls. Instead, this application proposed four layers of separation: low-level user interface, multi-window presentation API, user language API, and everything else comprises data model processing. This solution simplifies entire design. That, in turn, allowes customer to process essential volume of data on hardware having limited resources.