An interrogative visualization environment for large-scale engineering simulations (original) (raw)
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Interactive Computing Framework for Engineering Applications
2015
Abstract: Problem statement: Even though the computational steering state-of-the-art environments allow users to embed their simulation codes as a module for an interactive steering without the necessity for their own expertise in high-performance computing and visualisation, e.g., these environments are limited in their possible applications and mostly entail heavy code changes in order to integrate the existing code. Approach: In this study, we introduce an integration framework for engineering applications that supports distributed computations as well as visualization on-the-fly in order to reduce latency and enable a high degree of interactivity with only minor code alterations involved. Moreover, we tackle the problem of long communication delays in the case of huge data advent, which occur due to rigid coupling of simulation back-ends with visualization front-ends and handicap a user in exploring intuitively the relation of cause and effect. Results: The results for the first...
A High-Performance Interactive Computing Framework for Engineering Applications
Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, 2013
To harness the potential of advanced computing technologies, efficient (real time) analysis of large amounts of data is as essential as are front-line simulations. In order to optimise this process, experts need to be supported by appropriate tools that allow to interactively guide both the computation and data exploration of the underlying simulation code. The main challenge is to seamlessly feed the user requirements back into the simulation. State-of-the-art attempts to achieve this, have resulted in the insertion of so-called check-and break-points at fixed places in the code. Depending on the size of the problem, this can still compromise the benefits of such an attempt, thus, preventing the experience of real interactive computing. To leverage the concept for a broader scope of applications, it is essential that a user receives an immediate response from the simulation to his or her changes. Our generic integration framework, targeted to the needs of the computational engineering domain, supports distributed computations as well as on-the-fly visualisation in order to reduce latency and enable a high degree of interactivity with only minor code modifications. Namely, the regular course of the simulation coupled to our framework is interrupted in small, cyclic intervals followed by a check for updates. When new data is received, the simulation restarts automatically with the updated settings (boundary conditions, simulation parameters, etc.). To obtain rapid, albeit approximate feedback from the simulation in case of perpetual user interaction, a multi-hierarchical approach is advantageous. Within several different engineering test cases, we will demonstrate the flexibility and the effectiveness of our approach.
Creating User Interface for Interactive Simulations
2010 Third IEEE International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning, 2010
Interactive simulations encourage active/discovery learning in students. But developing simulations is a time consuming task. This along with the usability and scalability issues are the bottleneck in wide availability of such tools. The developer spends most of his/her time in tailoring the user interface (UI) to meet multiple constraints like pedagogy, teacher satisfaction and student learning styles. Providing an efficient way to develop UI can greatly speed up the development cycle and facilitate widespread access to high quality resources. In this paper, we describe how UI development can be separated from the simulation program to facilitate easy development of such visualization tool. We also discuss design and development of Graphical interface construction Kit (GicK) which helps in creating UI and combining it with simulation program for creating interactive simulations. A constructive physics simulation is developed as an exemplar of proposed framework. In the end we reported evaluation of constructive physics simulation by 43 higher school students and our conclusion.
Virtual environments for engineering applications
Virtual Reality, 1998
Abstrac[: Virtual reality (VR), provides the user with an ego-centred human-computer interaction environment by presenting the data as a computer-generated 3D virtual environment. This enables the user to be immersed in this world via user position tracking devices and to interact with the data objects in the world in intuitive ways. This paper describes a selection of VR simulations for engineering applications implemented in CLRC which demonstrate the potential of VR interaction techniques to offer quicker and possibly better understanding of spatial relationships and temporal patterns inherent in large data sets. T~vo of the case studies have been implemented to support engineers communicate and review their designs with scientists, managers and manufacturers and to plan their assembly and maintenance work in hazardous physical environments. The other two applications are visualisation case studies based on data sets generated by computational engineering simulations. The case studies are 'real world' applications, involving end-users of large or complex data sets. Insight gained into the user interaction requirements through the implementation and user comments is guiding ongoing research and development activity and this is discussed briefly.
INTERFACER: A user interface tool for interactive expert-systems
Decision Support Systems, 1996
From the user interface point of view, expert-systems are different from conventional applications in some features. First, the user query sequence highly depends upon input data up to that time. Second, any change in query sequence requires highly complicated data modification routines. Thus, user interface implementation is a bottleneck in the same manner as knowledge acquisition is the bottleneck for expert-systems, To resolve this problem, this paper proposes the user interface tool "INTERFACER" for interactive expert-systems. INTERFACER automatically generates a user interface screen according to the data input query requirement from the inference engine, and requires no user data modification routines in expert-system development. We applied the proposed INTERFACER to a practical middle-scale business system: The General Employee Affairs Expert-system. Program amount was decreased 50% compared to the conventional procedural implementation.
Graphical Interfaces to Complex Systems: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting, 1992
There seems to be a clear consensus that graphical interfaces provide an opportunity to integrate data from complex process in a way that can greatly enhance the problem solving ability of human operators in the future. However, this consensus is maske by a proliferation of terms to express this position in the basic and applied research literatures (e.g., “integrality,” “configurality,” “proximity-compatibility,” “visual momentum,” “direct manipulation,” and “ecological interface”). While the subtle nuances that distinguish among these terms are of academic interest, designers have greater concern for the general principles that might be gleaned from across the subtle distinctions. Base on a thorough review of the basic and applied literature (Bennett & Flach, In press), we argue that there is one basic characteristic of graphical representations that is critical for supporting problem solving. A good graphical display is one whose geometric (space/time) constraints reflect the fun...