AN IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT FOR REVIEWING MODEL-CENTRIC DESIGNS

Abstract

AbstractNew design objectives as the digital twin encourage companies to replace the tradition document-based systems engineering approach by a model-centric one. All views of the system rely on different types of models that serve many objectives, especially to improve communication among stakeholders. However, the increasing number of heterogeneous models jeopardize communication at the end. Indeed, to get a holistic view of the virtual definition, engineers have no other alternative than to navigate through numerous models requiring domain-specific software and language. In this paper, we propose to use virtual reality to develop an immersive environment for a collaborative model-centric review of engineered systems. The virtual environment, which relies on a digital thread stored in a graph-oriented database, enables users to explore a model-centric design by navigating through the models in a unique virtual space. To illustrate our proposal, we use a model-centric design of a telescope and shows how our preliminary prototype supports the reviewing activity with data limited to the architecture and geometry. Future works will concentrate on the integration of data related to other perspectives on the system.