1.1 Motivation#

[01] Background#

rivt development is motivated by a need for software that simplifies engineering document reuse. Engineering documents typically include text, tables, diagrams, equations and calculations from a variety of sources. Although software combining these elements is available, document reuse on a wide scale is limited. The limitations can be summarized as:

  • use is divided among many incompatible programs

  • newer documents are inaccessible without frequent software updates

  • update costs are high

  • software is limited to specific platforms

  • collaboration and version control is limited

  • report generation is limited

[02] Feature Comparison#

rivt is designed to address these limitations. The table below compares relevant features of representative software.

Table 1 - Feature Comparison

Program

Rep [1]

Ver [2]

Txt [3]

Comp [4]

CP [5]

Collab [6]

Matlab

no

no

no

no

no

no

Mathcad

no

no

no

no

no

no

Mathematica

no

no

no

no

no

no

Cloud SaaS

some

some

no

no

yes

some

Jupyter

no

no

no

yes

yes

yes

rivt

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes