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Object orientation

Principles and procedures such as modularization, abstraction or encapsulation have long been used in practical engineering activities in mechanical and plant engineering.

In the area of software development, object orientation was developed as an approach that combines these principles into a method and specifies uniform terms for important principles. However, object orientation is not only applicable to software development; it is also and especially suitable for interdisciplinary modeling of machines and facilities.

Object orientation foregrounds the entities that comprise an area of application and calls them objects. Objects are encapsulated units with defined properties that are represented by attributes.

When dealing with objects, differences between object classes and object instances are also be denoted in what follows as classes or instances . A machine usually contains several components of similar construction, e.g. motors. The specific motors installed in a machine are each uniquely identified by device tags (e.g. ZS+S1-M01). The common motor type can be understood as the class of motor instances.

The forming of classes is an effective method for structuring complex systems. A class describes a set of objects with similar attributes, similar functionality and similar relations.

Additional structuring is achieved by consolidating similarities among different classes into superclasses. A three-phase motor and a DC motor are two classes that share the properties of the Motor class indicated in the above diagram. This means that motor is a superclass that hands its properties down to the three-phase motor and DC motor classes (inheritance ). In this way, the three-phase motor and DC motor classes acquire the attributes of the motor superclass. They inherit the attributes of the superclass. An example of an attribute that is only valid for the three-phase motor is permissible mains frequency.