Extending Interactive Electronic Maintenance Manual with Web3D Technologies

Rapid developments in Information and Communication Technology have revealed a number of opportunities for supporting a complete product life cycle of the mechanical facilities particularly for maintenance purposes. The complexity of mechanical procedures as well as their perceptions has challenged engineers to create more effective and interactive maintenance manual. Therefore, this paper proposes an advanced electronic maintenance manual with the interactive 3D visualization by using the latest Web3D technologies. The advantage of this method is the visual and three dimensional explanations delivered in the maintenance manuals. This method will extend the traditional work instructions into an interactive electronic maintenance manual. The manual module which involves Cortona3D software is processed by preparation of 3D CAD data format from mechanical facilities. Then this process continues with the addition 3D animation with related texts through the maintenance operations, and converting the modified 3D data into VRML format which enables accessible through Web. The result is an interactive and on-demand electronic maintenance manual which allows users to communicate maintenance problems. The assessment concludes that the 3D maintenance manual will improve an intuitive interface and information retention, encourage visual knowledge and minimize ambiguity

Publishing Time Dependent Oceanographic Visualizations using VRML

Oceanographic simulations generate time dependent data; thus, visualizations of this data should include and realize the variable `time'. Moreover, the oceanographers are located across the world and they wish to conveniently communicate and exchange these temporal realizations. This publication of material may be achieved using different methods and languages. VRML provides one convenient publication medium that allows the visualizations to be easily viewed and exchanged between users. Using VRML as the implementation language, we describe five categories of operation. The strategies are determined by the level of calculation that is achieved at the generation stage compared to the playing of the animation. We name the methods: 2D movie, 3D spatial, 3D flipbook, key frame deformation and visualization program

Material Thermal Inputs of Iowa Materials for MEPDG, 2011

The thermal properties of concrete materials, such as coeffi cient of thermal expansion (CTE), thermal conductivity, and heat capacity, are required by the MEPDG program as the material inputs for pavement design. However, a limited amount of test data is available on the thermal properties of concrete in Iowa. The default values provided by the MEPDG program may not be suitable for Iowa concrete, since aggregate characteristics have signifi cant infl uence on concrete thermal properties

Shape: A 3D Modeling Tool for Astrophysics

We present a flexible interactive 3D morpho-kinematical modeling application for astrophysics. Compared to other systems, our application reduces the restrictions on the physical assumptions, data type and amount that is required for a reconstruction of an object's morphology. It is one of the first publicly available tools to apply interactive graphics to astrophysical modeling. The tool allows astrophysicists to provide a-priori knowledge about the object by interactively defining 3D structural elements. By direct comparison of model prediction with observational data, model parameters can then be automatically optimized to fit the observation. The tool has already been successfully used in a number of astrophysical research projects.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in the "IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

VIOLA - A multi-purpose and web-based visualization tool for neuronal-network simulation output

Neuronal network models and corresponding computer simulations are invaluable tools to aid the interpretation of the relationship between neuron properties, connectivity and measured activity in cortical tissue. Spatiotemporal patterns of activity propagating across the cortical surface as observed experimentally can for example be described by neuronal network models with layered geometry and distance-dependent connectivity. The interpretation of the resulting stream of multi-modal and multi-dimensional simulation data calls for integrating interactive visualization steps into existing simulation-analysis workflows. Here, we present a set of interactive visualization concepts called views for the visual analysis of activity data in topological network models, and a corresponding reference implementation VIOLA (VIsualization Of Layer Activity). The software is a lightweight, open-source, web-based and platform-independent application combining and adapting modern interactive visualization paradigms, such as coordinated multiple views, for massively parallel neurophysiological data. For a use-case demonstration we consider spiking activity data of a two-population, layered point-neuron network model subject to a spatially confined excitation originating from an external population. With the multiple coordinated views, an explorative and qualitative assessment of the spatiotemporal features of neuronal activity can be performed upfront of a detailed quantitative data analysis of specific aspects of the data. Furthermore, ongoing efforts including the European Human Brain Project aim at providing online user portals for integrated model development, simulation, analysis and provenance tracking, wherein interactive visual analysis tools are one component. Browser-compatible, web-technology based solutions are therefore required. Within this scope, with VIOLA we provide a first prototype.Comment: 38 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

Video Data Visualization System: Semantic Classification And Personalization

We present in this paper an intelligent video data visualization tool, based on semantic classification, for retrieving and exploring a large scale corpus of videos. Our work is based on semantic classification resulting from semantic analysis of video. The obtained classes will be projected in the visualization space. The graph is represented by nodes and edges, the nodes are the keyframes of video documents and the edges are the relation between documents and the classes of documents. Finally, we construct the user's profile, based on the interaction with the system, to render the system more adequate to its references.Comment: graphic

Modelling 3D product visualization on the online retailer

-Purpose: An emerging body of research has investigated telepresence and presence notions in online retailers’ websites during the past two decades. Since that time considerable research has been published in different fields to explain the meanings and applications of these notions. This study aims to investigate the antecedents and consequences of 3D product simulation telepresence and the effects of the consequences on consumers’ behavioural intentions on the online retailer Website. -Design/methodology/approach: this study developed a retailer Website in which a variety of laptops are presented by using 3D product visualizations. This research used a within-subjects design and employed two laboratory experiments. In the first experiment, a two-way repeated measure ANOVA was conducted to determine the effects of the manipulated conditions on the dependent variable (i.e., 3D telepresence). Finally, we used Amos 16 to test the overall goodness of fit of the proposed conceptual model. -Originality/values: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the UK that used a UK sample to investigate the effects of using 3D product visualization in an electrical industry (i.e., laptops) on consumers’ experiences. Secondly, this paper merged constructs from the human-computer-interaction (HCI) field (i.e., control, vividness and telepresence) to the proposed model. Moreover, the way this paper defines interactivity and telepresence adds value to this study. Thirdly, we developed new scales to measure telepresence and control constructs to suit consumers’ experience in the online retailer context. Finally, the design of this study is original in using a website that contains 3D product visualization with both utilitarian and hedonic values. -Findings: The manipulation checks showed that high control and animation provides most effective representation of telepresence. The overall goodness of fit of the conceptual model met the standards and showed that all the hypothesized paths were valid

A Study of Basic 3D Visualization Architecture for Network Operation and Management Tools

Recently, network operation tools using 3D visualization technologies have become more and more important. Generally, 3D visualized network operation tools are useful for computer network management or operation. However, a development of 3D visualized network operation tools requires advanced technical skills and highly cost. On the other hand, 3D computer graphics technologies become more familiar in recent years because of that computer hardwares and softwares are rapidly growing and obtain high performance. In this research, we have developed basic architecture of 3D visualization system for network operation and management tools, by using an open source 3DCG software ``Blender'' and a programming language ``Python``. In this paper, we explain details, results of evaluation and efficiency of the proposed architecture