Architecting 3D Interactive Educational Applications for the Web: The Case Study of CrystalWalk

Abstract

This paper describes the technical development of CrystalWalk, a crystal editor and visualization software designed for teaching materials science and engineering aiming to provide an accessible and interactive platform to students, professors and researchers. Justified by the lack of proper didactic tools, an evaluation of the existing crystallographic software has further shown opportunities for the development of a new software, more focused on the educational approach. CrystalWalk’s was guided by principles of free software, accessibility and democratization of knowledge, which was reflected in the application’s architecture strategy and the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies for the development of interactive web applications, such as HTML5/WebGL, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and responsive, resilient and elastic distributed systems. CrystalWalk’s architecture was successful in supporting the implementation of all specified software requirements proposed by state-of-the-art research and deemed to exert a positive impact in building accessible 3D interactive educational applications for the web.