EUREKA MAY 2001 COVER STORY
The next generation of CAD work stations
offer full interactive 3D designing yet fit in the pocket. Tom
Shelley reports
Cap: Fully interactive virtual reality CAD can now be squeezed
into a pocket PC.
Par: New software allows 3D file graphic sizes to be enormously
compressed, allowing them to be transmitted over mobile phone
connections and run on modestly powered platforms without putting
excessive strains on hardware.
The software is mainly being developed for interactive pocket
maintenance manuals, but is already proving of interest to groups
of users ranging from top designers to car salesmen, estate
agents and golfers.
The breakthrough comes from a company of
academics and programmers originally set up by three Russians,
George and Stephan Pachikov and Gary Kasparov of chess fame. The
first company, Paragraph, pioneered the development of hand
writing recognition and digital ink technologies, which were
licensed by Apple for the Newton, and are now used in many
palmtops.
Paragraph was also a pioneer of 3D graphics tools for the
Internet, and was purchased in 1997 by SGI, who decided to
concentrate on hardware the following year, allowing the managers
to buy their business back again which they renamed,
ParallelGraphics.
Today, ParallelGraphics is headquartered in Dublin, under the
direction of Connell Gallagher, an entrepreneur of considerable
experience who advised the managers on their buy back.
Development now takes place in both Dublin and Moscow.
Being particularly expert in VRML, the programmers are able to
compress 3D VRML models in what they call an Internet Model
Optimiser (IMO) and add interactions and animations using an
Internet Scene Assembler.
The result is an interactive, virtual reality CAD
viewer which they have chosen to call Pocket Cortona, able to run
on products such as Compaq's iPAQ pocket PC running Windows CE,
with the future possibility of it running on mobile phones..
What sets it apart from the rest of 3D CAD is its versatility and
the extraordinarily small file sizes. A 3D shaded graphic model
of a refrigerator, with doors which can be opened and buttons
triggered on screen occupies only 10K and a complete house, with
a great deal of functionality and texture mapping, 408K. IMO
imports DXF or VRML model files and can list all the component
object elements. The user can then decide which must be read in
at full resolution, and which may be reduced to, say, a coarser
mesh with only 10% of the resolution of the original. Visual
support is offered at every step of the creative process and
optimisation parameters are dynamically displayed in the 3D
window.
The original intention seems to have been to develop it as a web
viewing tool, but now there are plenty of these, it has been
taken a couple of stages further, to something suitable not only
for pocket computers but also, possibly, for the next generation
of mobile phones. The software will therefore run on any
computer, phone or TV set top box powered by Intel ARM, MIPS or
SH-3 processors.
One of the first applications is to produce interactive manuals
for maintenance engineers.
Strange as it may seem to some, maintenance engineers do not want
to have to go around with strapped-on personal computers and
eyepiece viewers making them look like characters from the film,
'Universal Soldiers'. Much preferred is something which can be
slipped out of a pocket, quickly interrogated and slipped back
again, and costs only an acceptable amount..
MAN Roland Druckmaschinen, a leading manufacturer of printing
presses is one of the first companies to test IMO. MAN's product
training department found that it improved the development time
for its Web based training by over 20%. "It has been a real
killer application for us." said Michael Gaubatz-Christ,
manager, training documentation, digital media and network
solutions for MAN.
A 129K sized mockup of a Jaguar car with working doors and some
controls is clearly aimed at car sales. ParallelGraphics is also
partnering with a technology based company to develop
applications we have been asked not to reveal for the golfing
enthusiast. The company says its software "Does not work on
palmtops or mobile phones, yet, but we are looking at developing
our application for these devices."
The advantage for design engineers is that with the software
running on devices which can be carried in the pocket, work with
mobile phones, and which will soon probably form parts of mobile
phones, it will be possible to do interactive product reviews
anywhere in the world, including out at sea and on top of wind
swept oil rigs.
The price of hardware is quite reasonable, even for resource
starved engineers and design departments. The Compaq iPAQ costs
around £500 in the UK, and suitable platforms made by other Far
Eastern suppliers can be found for £200 to £300. The software
is currently in Beta, and may be down loaded free from www.parallelgraphics.com
Interested parties should down load now, since
the business plan includes licensing charges for finished
versions.
Design Pointers
New software allows 3D CAD models to be viewed on a palm sized
pocket PC.
File sizes are small enough to send over mobile phone wireless
links with present day technology
Software runs under Windows CE version 3.0 or on conventional PCs
or Macs
Designer's dream box, can it be real?
Speaking at Solid Modelling 2001, a leading designer outlined a
vision of a designer's CAD workstation which could be close to
reality.
Bob Buxton, of Buxton Wall McPeake, gave a paper in which he
outlined the possible tools he thought CAD vendors could develop
to provide designers with a more user-friendly and efficient way
of using CAD.
His proposed CAD workstation opened out to reveal an A3 size
flat screen and an A3 size drawing pad. Instead of laboriously
selecting tools from a screen menu using mouse clicks and the
usual hierarchy of folders, he suggested that there should be a
tray of reprogrammable physical tools linked to the software, so
that for example touching the ellipse pen on the screen produced
an ellipse, touching with the airbrush pen filled a shape with
colour and so on. He suggested that those who still felt the need
for a keyboard for occasional use could have a simple keyboard
overlay for part of the drawing pad.
He challenged the idea that the keyboard and mouse were the last
word in computer interface for CAD users. Those present agreed
that the technology to design by forming shapes in an immersive
world with a gloved hand had been around for years. Debate then
turned to whether practical developments were limited by
Microsoft's Windows operating systems, until an IT consultant
from NEL said that all the tools for more radical ways of working
were already all there, plus even better ones in the next
version.
Combined with the compressed VRML technology outlined above, the
facility Bob proposed could also include interactive 3D and be
made pocket sized. Since his company is heavily into high tech
industrial and product design, we take it that he would be
delighted to develop such a tool box and make it real, if any of
our readers out there in hardware manufacture would care to make
the necessary investment.