A rule-based system for the automated creation of VR data for virtual plant review

Recently, much effort has been put into the application of information technology in all product manufacturing processes in order to introduce new products to the market more rapidly and efficiently and trim the cost for product development. Especially, digital production supports all the manufacturing activities based on a digital plant. The digital plant refers to the computer model that materializes the integrated modeling of the product, process, production equipment, and environment for an actual manufacturing plant. Virtual reality (VR) technologies also have been developing rapidly and are being implemented in the manufacturing field; they provide the conditions for evaluating products and plants in realistic virtual space. Many studies have already been undertaken about VR-based technologies such as computer graphics, 3D displays, human-computer interface, and virtual prototyping, which are being practically applied in the manufacturing industry. In order to create a prototype, earlier studies were focused on methods using product data but there is a technical requirement to review the plant that consists of products, processes, facilities, and labor. Furthermore, the quality of VR data depends on the worker (or designer) because this procedure converts only the geometry of computer-aided design data to VR data; everything else depends on the engineer's ability and experience. Consequently, there is no consistent procedure that reflects engineering factors such as events and properties, which were included in the design stage. This article introduces a rule-based system that creates a virtual prototype through the data of product, process, plant, and resource for virtual plant review and suggests a new procedure for virtual plant review.