This thesis describes the application of object technology to the schematic capture of electronic circuit designs for simulation. It outlines the development of a prototype graphical user interface in C++ for the ALFA object-oriented circuit simulation language, which allows circuit schematics to be translated into ALFA source code for input to the simulator.
The key aspect of the research is the exploitation of the innate extensibility of object-oriented systems, such that generic control structures can be created to manage unpredictable collections of polymorphic objects. In the prototype interface described, this technique is used to allow the run time definition of new components by the user, which are automatically integrated into the ALFA circuit simulation component library. This is achieved by a process of minimal recompilation of elements of the interface, which integrates user defined components into an extensible classification hierarchy of component types. This transparent process means that the user may design a new component, supplying details about its appearance, attributes and its behavioural characteristics, integrate it into a circuit and simulate that circuit's behaviour as a single run time process.