This should be the last of a burst of screen cast posts for this week. This last one discusses how MVX configuration can be used to make it easy to alter 3D scenes after an initial project delivery where you may not have access to a 3D designer or want to keep ongoing maintenance costs down. As usual a transcript follows the video:
There are a variety of scenarios where a 3D Visualization system such as MVX has significant advantages. Many customers recognize this and are excited the prospect of applying the technology. One concern customers have brought up is having to bring in a 3D designer every time some aspect of the 3D scene changes. This screen cast illustrates that MVX can be designed so that adding or modifying what equipment is displayed in a 3D scene can be done without having to alter the 3D scene graphics. It can be set up to be a configuration exercise that people who have familiarity with form based Windows programs can learn fairly easily.
The display shows two programs. On the left is the 3D visualization program, while on the right is a configuration program that can be used to define what equipment is present in the scene.
I’m looking around the scene and you can see two reclaimers that have been included as part of the 3D scene. You can choose to have equipment defined in the 3D scene at design time or have the equipment loaded purely at run time.
I’m now going to add a truck to the configuration. This truck is defined in the MVX Object Server and has not been defined in the original 3D scene apart from the fact the scene knows what a truck looks like. The communications infrastructure kicks in and informs all connected clients that a new piece of equipment has been added to the data model. The 3D visualization clients then bind this new truck object to a visual representation of a truck and one appears.
Any configuration changes I make on the server are automatically transferred to connected clients.
We can change position and orientation information.
Such as.. Roll
Pitch
and Yaw
Now let’s add another item of equipment. This time a light.
You can make the standard position and orientation changes.
You can also make any state changes that are available for that item of equipment. In the case of a light we can control whether the light is on and the brightness of the light.
I’ll add a another truck and change its position and orientation.
One more truck and we’ll leave it at that.
This screen cast has focused on configuration. However you can link any of the position, orientation and other visual properties to external data sources such as SCADA systems, GPS systems, training systems etc.
The main message of this screen cast is that you don’t need access to a 3D designer to make configuration changes in a 3D scene. Note also that these configuration changes can also be linked to external systems so that for example your asset management system is the automatic source for 3D equipment configuration information in MVX.