by A plant layout design and walkthrough (VR ?) program is
released -
ftp site - wuarchive.wustl.edu
directory - /graphics/graphics/packages/mplan
The files are README and mplan-1.0.tar.Z
( thanks to George Kyriazis and David Camp )
This program can be used to design, develop any plant
or building, and move around the scene. It uses heirarchical
model of assemblies, sub-assemblies and objects. A small
set of objects is included.
Here's a part of README file --
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"masterPlan"
a plant layout design and Walkthrough package.
mplan-1.0.tar.Z - version 1.0, 18-August-1993.
masterPlan is a Layout design and Walkthrough
package. With the help of this package, one can design
and develop plants, buildings etc. with internal layout
and equipments. Facilities are provided to create the
scene with objects and manipulate them. User can modify
any of the parametrs to get the desired layout. Once the
layout is prepared, you can walk in and around it, to
get the feel of the design. User can interact with the
package with the help of buttons, sliders, counters etc.
Objects can be defined with defferent material
properties. One can interactively define new material
types or modify the existing ones. Objects can be
shaded or drawn in wireframe mode.
The objects can be logically grouped for the ease of
designing, viewing and manipulating them. Objects are
grouped according to their funationality, locality or
any other criteria in to Assemblies. These assemblies
in turn may be included in the higher order assemblies.
Thus we have our data-structure grouped in to
assemblies, sub-assemblies and objects. Further,
these are organised into a tree structure, with
objects making the leaf nodes and assemblies and
sub-assemblies the intermediate nodes. Each assembly and
object can have its own modelling parameters like -
location, scale and orientation. Modelling parameters of
an assembly are applied to all its constituents in
addition to their own modelling parameters. One can
remove a part of this tree and keep in a separate file,
to have a library of often used assemblies and objects.
masterPlan is written on SGI Personal Iris 4d/20GT,
hardware Z - buffer and 24 bitplanes, IRIX 3.3.2. Also
works on IRIX 4.0.1 properly. I have no way of knowing
whether it works on other SGI platforms (as I have access
only to PI 4d/20). I can only hope it works !
User interface is designed using Mark Overmar's
FORMS library.
Please mail suggestions, modifications, bug reports etc.
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