The presented work represents an advanced pace
towards the automation of the design procedure of
power electronics converters by eliminating the
cumbersome steps the conventional CAD tools
implicate. This is successfully achieved by introducing
knowledge-based techniques. The proposed system
architecture assures a flexible interaction between the
user and the tool as well as among the various modules
constituting the system itself. The knowledge base
containing topologies and switching devices is
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OMRANE et al.: CAD SYSTEM FOR POWER ELECTRONIC CONVERTERS 105
represented using object-oriented paradigm. It is the
function of the inference engine to find the suitable
topology that matches the user entries. Benefiting from
the object oriented programming and the design
visualness features of Visual Basic programming
language; an attractive user interface is developed to
assure the interaction of the user with the system.
Furthermore, a library module enhanced by several vital
functions such as searching, adding, updating or
removing a device is developed. The library contains
more than 400 devices of diodes, BJTs, SCRs and
MOSFETs. This module makes the developed tool
independent in its devices from that of the simulation
package. A help module that explains how to use the
developed tool and gathers information about power
electronics converters is built and linked to the tool. This
is enhanced by a flexible demo to further strengthen the
understanding of converters operation. Finally, a
demonstrative example of four-quadrant dc drive is
discussed to demonstrate the validity of the developed
system. The design example proves the validity of the
system in terms of minimum expertise required from the
user, the design time and the flexibility of procedure
compared to the conventional tools. However, the
proposed tool could be enhanced and ameliorated by
expanding both parts of its knowledge base and
introducing more criteria in selecting the most suitable
topology with the optimum parameters.