The goals of this research include developing and identifying software technologies, which facilitate the use of buildings described in Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools in both a simulation and visualization. The study focused on the development of a tool to fulfill the visualization needs of a Visual Energy Use System. To accomplish this, the study identified an open BIM file standard, the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). The study also identified a video game based 3D virtual environment, the Doom 3 Engine. A tool developed during the study, IFCtoMAP, converts IFC data into the .MAP file format understood by the Doom 3 Engine. Finally, the study identified the IFCtoIDF utility, which translates IFC data into a format understood by the building energy simulation program EnergyPlus. Data from the Building Information Modeling tool Revit Building exports to the .IFC file format, which in turn drives the two conversion utilities IFCtoMAP and IFCtoIDF. The output of the IFCtoIDF tool consists of an .IDF file that EnergyPlus uses to perform an energy simulation. The output of the IFCtoMAP tool consists of a .MAP file, which the Doom 3 game engine uses to display three dimensional first person perspective visualization. The result of the study was the successful creation of an automated tool that converts building geometry found in .IFC files into the .MAP file format understood by Doom 3 game engine. This document details the methods employed by the IFCtoMAP software along with a brief discussion of the IFCtoIDF conversion utility.

Simulation plays a key role in the computer-aided design of systems, primarily because it helps in catching design bugs at an early stage and in quickly ruling out many unreasonable options in the design space. There is a wealth of tools and languages that have been proposed over the years for the design and verification of hybrid systems and most of them provide 3D visualization utility for facilitating design process. However, their visualization systems often rely on some external configuration files written in naive 3D APIs like VRML or Java3D and complicated connections have to be established between the simulation data and the visualization. Numerous efforts have to be invested in visualization related modeling and certain level of understanding of the low level 3D libraries are needed. Thus it is not an easy job for non-professions to build a 3D visualization. In this thesis we explore the idea that in a hybrid system model, almost all the information need for visualization is already in place. This means that very few annotation should be enough to fully specify a useful 3D visualization. Based on this idea, we propose a lightweight 3D visualization framework which allows the user to expresses the three-dimensional object in a high level and abstract way and to take advantage of the data already in the simulation. We evaluate our approaching by building a prototype extension of modeling language called Acumen. The result of this thesis work is included in Acumen's official release version that can be download at www.acumen-language.org. To build a 3D visualization in Acumen, only very few annotations need to be added to the simulation model and are included inside one reserved variable. Non-professions like students who are studying Cyber-physical systems can easily use this tool to visualize their models in Acumen without any prerequisite knowledge regarding 3D visualization technology. We also developed a number of benchmarks to test the correctness and functionality of Acumen3D. Besides, as a lager case study into the expressivity of Acumen and its visualizaiton efficiency, we developed a simplified model of a Ping Pong game. We gained experience about how to model complex hybrid system in Acumen. Moreover by comparing modeling such a hybrid system in Java3D and in Acumen3D, we find concrete evidence that modelling it in Acumen3D is easier in that of less code and less prerequisite knowledge and more supporting built in functions.

The goals of this research include developing and identifying software technologies, which facilitate the use of buildings described in Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools in both a simulation and visualization. The study focused on the development of a tool to fulfill the visualization needs of a Visual Energy Use System. To accomplish this, the study identified an open BIM file standard, the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). The study also identified a video game based 3D virtual environment, the Doom 3 Engine. A tool developed during the study, IFCtoMAP, converts IFC data into the .MAP file format understood by the Doom 3 Engine. Finally, the study identified the IFCtoIDF utility, which translates IFC data into a format understood by the building energy simulation program EnergyPlus. Data from the Building Information Modeling tool Revit Building exports to the .IFC file format, which in turn drives the two conversion utilities IFCtoMAP and IFCtoIDF. The output of the IFCtoIDF tool consists of an .IDF file that EnergyPlus uses to perform an energy simulation. The output of the IFCtoMAP tool consists of a .MAP file, which the Doom 3 game engine uses to display three dimensional first person perspective visualization. The result of the study was the successful creation of an automated tool that converts building geometry found in .IFC files into the .MAP file format understood by Doom 3 game engine. This document details the methods employed by the IFCtoMAP software along with a brief discussion of the IFCtoIDF conversion utility.

Background: Medication misuse results in considerable problems for both patient and society. It is a complex problem with many contributing factors, including timely access to product information. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanObjective: To investigate the value of 3-dimensional (3D) visualization paired with video conferencing as a tool for pharmaceutical advice over distance in terms of accessibility and ease of use for the advice seeker. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanMethods: We created a Web-based communication service called AssistancePlus that allows an advisor to demonstrate the physical handling of a complex pharmaceutical product to an advice seeker with the aid of 3D visualization and audio/video conferencing. AssistancePlus was tested in 2 separate user studies performed in a usability lab, under realistic settings and emulating a real usage situation. In the first study, 10 pharmacy students were assisted by 2 advisors from the Swedish National Co-operation of Pharmacies call centre on the use of an asthma inhaler. The student-advisor interview sessions were filmed on video to qualitatively explore their experience of giving and receiving advice with the aid of 3D visualization. In the second study, 3 advisors from the same call centre instructed 23 participants recruited from the general public on the use of 2 products: (1) an insulin injection pen, and (2) a growth hormone injection syringe. First, participants received advice on one product in an audio-recorded telephone call and for the other product in a video-recorded AssistancePlus session (product order balanced). In conjunction with the AssistancePlus session, participants answered a questionnaire regarding accessibility, perceived expressiveness, and general usefulness of 3D visualization for advice-giving over distance compared with the telephone and were given a short interview focusing on their experience of the 3D features. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanResults: In both studies, participants found the AssistancePlus service helpful in providing clear and exact instructions. In the second study, directly comparing AssistancePlus and the telephone, AssistancePlus was judged positively for ease of communication (P = .001), personal contact (P = .001), explanatory power (P andlt;.001), and efficiency (P andlt;.001). Participants in both studies said that they would welcome this type of service as an alternative to the telephone and to face-to-face interaction when a physical meeting is not possible or not convenient. However, although AssistancePlus was considered as easy to use as the telephone, they would choose AssistancePlus over the telephone only when the complexity of the question demanded the higher level of expressiveness it offers. For simpler questions, a simpler service was preferred. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanConclusions: 3D visualization paired with video conferencing can be useful for advice-giving over distance, specifically for issues that require a higher level of communicative expressiveness than the telephone can offer. 3D-supported advice-giving can increase the range of issues that can be handled over distance and thus improve access to product information. / <p>Funding Agencies|eHealth Institute by the National Cooperation of Swedish Pharmacies-Apoteket AB, Linnaeus University (previously University of Kalmar)||Regional Council in Kalmar County||Kalmar County Council||Municipality of Kalmar||</p>

Cell count is an important metric in neurological research. The loss in numbers of certain cells like neurons has been found to accompany not only the deterioration of important brain functions but disorders like clinical depression as well. Since the manual counting of cell numbers is a near impossible task considering the sizes and numbers involved, an automated approach is the obvious alternative to arrive at the cell count. In this thesis, a software application is described that automatically segments, counts, and helps visualize the various cell bodies present in a sample mouse brain, by analyzing the images produced by the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope (KESM) at the Brain Networks Laboratory. The process is described essentially in five stages: Image acquisition, Pre- Processing, Processing, Analysis and Refinement, and finally Visualization. Nissl staining is a staining mechanism that is used on the mouse brain sample to highlight the cell bodies of our interest present in the brain, namely neurons, granule cells and interneurons. This stained brain sample is embedded in solid plastic and imaged by the KESM, one section at a time. The volume that is digitized by this process is the data that is used for the purpose of segmentation. While most sections of the mouse brain tend to be comprised of sparsely populated neurons and red blood cells, certain sections near the cerebellum exhibit a very high density and population of smaller granule cells, which are hard to segment using simpler image segmentation techniques. The problem of the sparsely populated regions is tackled using a combination of connected component labeling and template matching, while the watershed algorithm is applied to the regions of very high density. Finally, the marching cubes algorithm is used to convert the volumetric data to a 3D polygonal representation. Barring a few initializations, the process goes ahead with minimal manual intervention. A graphical user interface is provided to the user to view the processed data in 2D or 3D. The interface offers the freedom of rotating and zooming in/out of the 3D model, as well as viewing only cells the user is interested in analyzing. The segmentation results achieved by our automated process are compared with those obtained by manual segmentation by an independent expert.

Cell count is an important metric in neurological research. The loss in numbers of certain cells like neurons has been found to accompany not only the deterioration of important brain functions but disorders like clinical depression as well. Since the manual counting of cell numbers is a near impossible task considering the sizes and numbers involved, an automated approach is the obvious alternative to arrive at the cell count. In this thesis, a software application is described that automatically segments, counts, and helps visualize the various cell bodies present in a sample mouse brain, by analyzing the images produced by the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope (KESM) at the Brain Networks Laboratory. The process is described essentially in five stages: Image acquisition, Pre- Processing, Processing, Analysis and Refinement, and finally Visualization. Nissl staining is a staining mechanism that is used on the mouse brain sample to highlight the cell bodies of our interest present in the brain, namely neurons, granule cells and interneurons. This stained brain sample is embedded in solid plastic and imaged by the KESM, one section at a time. The volume that is digitized by this process is the data that is used for the purpose of segmentation. While most sections of the mouse brain tend to be comprised of sparsely populated neurons and red blood cells, certain sections near the cerebellum exhibit a very high density and population of smaller granule cells, which are hard to segment using simpler image segmentation techniques. The problem of the sparsely populated regions is tackled using a combination of connected component labeling and template matching, while the watershed algorithm is applied to the regions of very high density. Finally, the marching cubes algorithm is used to convert the volumetric data to a 3D polygonal representation. Barring a few initializations, the process goes ahead with minimal manual intervention. A graphical user interface is provided to the user to view the processed data in 2D or 3D. The interface offers the freedom of rotating and zooming in/out of the 3D model, as well as viewing only cells the user is interested in analyzing. The segmentation results achieved by our automated process are compared with those obtained by manual segmentation by an independent expert.

Orientador: Hans Dirk Ebert / Banca: Ricardo Latgé Milward de Azevedo / Banca: Cláudio Coelho de Lima / Resumo: As pesquisas em geociências tendem cada vez mais a utilizar grande volume de dados heterogêneos, cuja interpretação integrada é complexa devido ao envolvimento de diferentes parâmetros, bem como de relações temporais e espaciais. As técnicas de computação gráfica e visualização científica assumem importância crescente por permitirem representar e manipular dados geológicos tal como são e estão no espaço, isto é, em 3D. Esta dissertação teve por objetivo utilizar ferramentas computacionais para modelar geometricamente e visualizar dados geológicos. Utilizando o programa GOCAD foram construídas superfícies paleobatimétricas das bacias de Santos e Campos para o meso- Neocretáceo a partir dos dados disponíveis na literatura. Sua integração com dados litológicos e estruturais em um único ambiente de visualização 3D permitiu aumentar o potencial de interpretação dos dados originalmente representados em mapas bidimensionais. Para melhor contextualizar a evolução paleogeográfica destas bacias durante a abertura do Atlântico Sul e representar analogias com ambientes de deposição atuais foram construídas superfícies batimétricas do Atlântico Sul do mesocretáceo ao recente e do Mar Vermelho. A partir da utilização de ferramentas de modelagem e visualização 3D de domínio público (VTK) foi desenvolvido um programa computacional (Tensor3D) para a simulação da deformação de objetos geológicos, desde rochas, estruturas tectônicas, domos de sal até bacias, a partir da modificação dos componentes de cisalhamento simples e puro contidos em tensores de deformação... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Research in Geosciences is currently using extensive volumes of heterogeneous data, whose integrated interpretation is complex due to the involvement of different parameters, as well as time and spatial relationships. Computer graphics and scientific visualization techniques are assuming increasing importance as they allow the representation and manipulation of geologic data exactly as they appear in 3D space. The purpose of this work is using computational tools in order to geometrically model and visualize geologic data. Using the GOCAD program, mid-Early Cretaceus paleobathymetric surfaces have been constructed for the Santos and Campos basins, based on published data. Their additional integration with lithologic and structural data in a unified 3D visualization environment, allowed an increase in the interpretative potential of data originally represented using 2D maps. In order to provide a more general context for the paleogeographic evolution of these basins during the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean, and to represent analogies with current depositional environments, paleobathymetric surfaces have been modelled for the South Atlantic Ocean, from mid- Early Cretaceous to present time, and for the present Red Sea. By using 3D open-source modelling and visualization tools (VTK), a computational program (Tensor3D) has been devoloped to simulate deformation of geologic objects, from rocks, tectonic structures, salt domes to basins. This process is controlled by modifyng simple and pure shear components contained in strain tensors... (Complete abstract, click electronic access below) / Mestre

The design process is important to all landscape architects. It helps generate ideas to solve problems in an efficient amount of time and insure that all stages of a project are completed. Generally, a design process includes project acquisition, inventory and site analysis, conflicts identification, public involvement, draft products, and final presentation. Among these elements, public involvement has been recognized as one of the most important elements in the landscape design process. It not only helps professionals get projects done smoothly, but it also helps with long-term client retention. Traditional two-dimensional communication methods using renderings, design plans, and maps have not been fully successful in their ability to engage and sufficiently inform clients and stakeholders. While professional planners are able to rely on their experience to help them visualize proposed landscapes, the average client is often overwhelmed by the relatively complex and abstract information, and unable to translate this information into landscape visions. Developments in the field of 3D graphics have dramatically extended possibilities to overcome this barrier by providing a tool that produces designs that are easy to comprehend and helps clients better visualize the end product that the designer has put forth. Some people argue that the high investment cost of 3D software such as ArcGIS, 3Dmax, etc., and its time-consuming process to master, is too great an obstacle for most designers and firms to use the software in their work with the average client or stakeholder. However, little research has been done to investigate the extent to which landscape architects have adopted the 3D software. We know even less about their opinions on the suitability of existing 3D software packages to meet their professional needs. A nationwide survey about current use and future demand for 3D simulation software within the landscape profession was conducted for this thesis. Comprehensive online surveys were sent to two groups: (1) landscape architecture firms and freelance landscape architects; and (2) institutions with landscape architecture programs. In total, 3,434 firms and freelance architects were identified based on data from the American Society of Landscape Architecture. Names and contact information of ninety-one faculty members from institutions with landscape architecture programs were found on the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture website. The opportunities and challenges of 3D visualization technology and its potential applications in landscape and environmental planning have been examined based on the findings from survey results. The results are relevant to the future improvement and innovation of 3D visualization software in the landscape architecture profession and can assist landscape architecture educators with future curriculum development.

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Simulation modeling and visualization can substantially help in designing complex construction operations and in making optimal decisions where traditional methods prove ineffective or are unfeasible. However, there has been limited use of simulation in planning construction operations due to the unavailability of appropriate visual communication tools that can provide users with a more realistic and comprehensible feedback from simulation analyses. Visualizing simulated construction operations in 3D can significantly help in establishing the credibility of simulation models. In addition, 3D visualization can provide valuable insight into the subtleties of construction operations that are otherwise non-quantifiable and presentable. New software development technologies emerge at incredible rates that allow engineers and scientists to create novel, domain-specific applications. This study capitalized on a computer graphics technology based on the concept of the "Scene Graph" to design and implement a general-purpose 3D Visualization System that is Simulation and CAD-software independent. This system, the "Dynamic Construction Visualizer", enables realistic visualization of modeled construction operations and the resulting products in 3D and can be used in conjunction with a wide variety of simulation tools. This thesis describes the "Dynamic Construction Visualizer" as well as the "Scene Graph" architecture and the Frame Updating algorithms used in its design. / Master of Science