Technical Paper
by Harry Foster, Michael Horn, Bob Oden, Pradeep Salla, and Hans van der Schoot, Mentor Graphics
What is a pattern? In the process of designing something (e.g., a building, software program, or an airplane) the designer often makes numerous decisions about how to solve specific problems. If the designer can identify common factors contributing to the derived solution and abstracts the solution in such a way that it can be applied to other similar recurring problems, then the resulting generalized problem-solution pair is known as a pattern. Documenting patterns provides a method of describing good design practices within a field of expertise and enables designers to improve the quality in their own designs by reusing a proven solution on a recurring problem. |