The Challenge

Quadstone wanted to re-design Paramics, its nine module suite for modeling a wide range of real-world traffic and transportation problems. With the number of modules and GUIs growing and with the company facing the prospect of someday supporting platforms beyond windows, Quadstone realized that its existing development platform, Motif, could not meet its needs. The team found that Motif was inflexible and lacked the useful tools and helper classes they needed.

The Solution

Qt’s unique tools and helper classes enabled the Quadstone development team to redesign the modules to make use of GUI layouts and widgets that they did not have access to in Motif. In Qt, the company found a framework that enabled them to write up-to-date, flexible, cross-platform GUIs.

The Value

Qt was much faster to develop with than Motif. In fact, the company estimates it is saving as much as 20 percent in development time. There’s a significant savings in code sizes as well. Developers are writing 30 to 40 percent less GUI and supporting code, now that they have moved to Qt. The company can now devote additional time to developing more user-driven features in its re-designed product suite.

“Qt has allowed us to write more stable, flexible, user-oriented and modular code. This means we can create better applications with more user-driven features in a shorter timeframe than would ever have been possible with Motif."
Ewan Speirs, Head of Paramics Development, Quadstone.