A dynamic display method and apparatus includes a computer operatively connected to an external measuring device (EMD) or numeric input device. A figure approximating a real object or space and incorporating recognizable geometric elements is sketched by the user and displayed on the computer display screen. A specified geometric element of the figure is user selected and dimensioned by operation of an external measuring device. A constraint engine subsystem within the computer incorporates the dimensioning information into the figure and redraws the figure as each dimension is received from the external measuring device.

A computer aided design (CAD) or computer aided manufacturing (CAM) system may be used to generate a drawing containing many elements with certain parameters. Commands or functions and their parameters that are used to generate the elements are stored for later retrieval. The user may directly select an element from the drawing displayed in another activated window or some part of the screen or on a digitizer. After a user selects the element, a similar element is automatically displayed. A menu may be displayed after selecting an element in order for the user to modify various parameters for the similar element.

A drawing generation apparatus includes: positioning markers provided in each source component drawing and destination component drawing involved and displayed to indicate a source. reference position and a destination reference position, respectively; a component drawing database for storing the component drawings; a component information database that allows selection of the component drawings based on one of the input specification information and the drawing information, and outputting component drawing information relating to the component drawings; and an engine unit for retrieving the component drawings from said component drawing database based on the component drawing information from said component information database, and combining the component drawings such that the positioning markers are aligned.

Position and sizing of objects within a window that is resized is determined by selectively set parameters. Resizing of the object in response to resizing of a window in which the object appears can be set to an absolute or proportional basis or constrained to respond to only a vertical or a horizontal change in window size. Alternatively, an object can be centered within a window with reference to the margins of a window, which can be selectively set to change in an absolute or proportional manner as the window is resized. Movement of the object within the window can also be set in both the horizontal and vertical direction on an absolute or a proportional basis. To avoid accumulated round-off errors, the sizing of an object always relates to a dynamic initial position, which corresponds to the position in which the object currently would be if moved by a dynamic action, without regard for positional changes due to resizing of the window. However, the position of the object in a window is always saved based upon its initial position.

Displaying of display data generated by an application onto a display device can immediately be customized. A display control section 803 treats game field data passed from a game processing section 802 as texture data, and deforms the data in accordance with a registered value on a management TB 804 and a player's instruction input via a manipulation receiving section 801. Then, the display control section 803 outputs the data onto a display device. When the player's instruction is not input, the data is deformed on the basis of only the registered value on the management TB 804 and the date is output onto the display device.