Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4
Light pole moves to minimum required distance to the manhole in two steps
project had already geometric collision detection with regards to infrastructure
features implemented in their software package. The collision detection here is
rule based. The idea is to let semantically defined rules be part of the collision
detection. This means rules can be described in the GMO and obeyed. In our sim-
ple case we incorporated a distance rule between respectively a light pole and a
manhole thereby coming from two different domains. They can easily conflict
placed on the same spot during the design phase. When these enhanced GMO's
are loaded into the model and executed they check whether they conform to the
given rules and act accordingly. In our case conflicting GMO's change colour to
orange and enable the possibility to resolve the problem, which in this case means
moving apart obeying the rule of distance to neighbouring objects. This situation
is shown in the following illustrations.
Figure
4
shows an orchestrated situation where a light pole and a manhole are
getting into a conflict about space. Reading Fig.
4
from left to right one can see
that both the light pole and the manhole have been selected, both turn yellow on
the left hand side and so the GMO's are both selected and activated. There is a
wish to move the light pole to the right. The light pole is therefore moved to a
different position in small steps using the menu, but then eventually collides with
the distance rule of the nearby manhole. Both the light pole and the manhole turns
orange, which is shown in the centre of Fig.
4
, indicating a conflict involving these
two objects. A resolve button for this special issue has been developed and can be
activated. The light pole moves a bit back thereby conforming the distance rule of
the manhole. The colour of the two objects turn back to yellow.
One can argue that it not necessarily should be the light pole moving but the
manhole, and certainly there are a lot of questions arising from this kind of func-
tionality. Since we did not have this kind of autonomous behaviour available in
objects within a construction before, the numbers of possibilities accompanied
with questions and challenges is overwhelming. How do one handle for instance
semantic rules, and how do one assure that the right decisions are found among the
objects. Can parts of the collaboration, discussions, and agreements found among
