The Surgical Assistant Workstation (SAW) is a software development framework that can be used to develop new applications in robot-assisted surgery with augmented visualization. Robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery and micro-surgery as presented by the da Vinci telerobotic system and the Johns Hopkins Steady Hand, respectively can be improved by providing fully-integrated image guidance and information-enhanced intra-operative assistance to the surgical team and to the surgeon in particular. This paper describes several use case applications of the SAW framework, as well as a novel user interface library being developed to support 3D interactive menu systems and overlays for surgical guidance.