Automated Production of Engineering Models

This example demonstrates the research I have undertaken into automating the model creation process for engineering process models.

This example is of manufacturing a cube, where the cost of manufacture depends mainly on the size of the cube, its wall thickness, what material is used, and what process is used. This is a simple example, a real world example involving hand layup of a spar (wing component) proved to be too complicated for ease of demonstration explanation, especially over the web.

An ontology (held in Protege http://protege.stanford.edu/) is used to represent the common information needed for all cube models, (and other models) produced. The ontology is broken down into sub ontologies for parts, materials, processes, consumables, resources, and tooling. These are colour coded in the visualisation/interactive model to ease understanding.

Code written for this research is used to recursively read the Protege tree (via nested SQL calls), and reproduce the tree in the modelling system (Vanguard System http://www.vanguardsw.com/products/vanguard-system/). The modelling system enables calculations, and extra code written for this research also allows choices to be made by the user/modeller.

This simple example enables the user/modeller to make choices of the material, process, consumables, resources, and tooling to be used, for the manufacture of this cube. In this example choices were made for material - Aluminium, and process - Rivetting.

Cube Model

This model is then output to an online representation (this works in Internet Explorer only, a version for Mozilla Firefox is also in progress). The IE version requires the Adobe SVG player, currently downloadable, and free).

The online SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) representation provides an interactive CAD type representation of the component, that can be manipulated, to change size and wall thickness. The wall thickness is indicated by the inner dotted cube. As the size or wall thickness of the cube is altered, immediate feedback is provided. Alterations can be made with the up/down buttons. Also if these values, or the Aluminium cost per metre cubed are changed, the calculated parameter and cost values change automatically, in response.

The SVG representation shown below can be found at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/SVGCubeExample/CubePartDefinitionwithCosts.htm.

Cube Model - Translated to SVG

http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/SVGCubeExample/CubePartDefinitionwithCosts.htm.

It is also possible to zoom in and out of the diagram, and move it around the screen.

As well as engineering models, I have experimented with economics models, and with translating either type of model to Java, and Java applets. Below is a screenshot of a simple economic model translated and visualised as an interactive Java applet.

Consumption Function translation from modelling system into Java

The models created as part of this research are available at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm.

Berners-Lee not happy with IE

This is an interesting article that can be found on the BCS (British Computer Society) website http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.21549.

"Internet Explorer is not up to speed with other browsers when it comes to offering support for scalable vector graphics (SVG), according to Tim Berners-Lee.

SVG is often found in online maps as it allows images to be resized or zoomed into without losing resolution.

Mr Berners-Lee, head of W3C, does not like to express preference for browsers and so did not name IE by name, reports the Associated Press.

'If you look around at browsers, you'll find that most of them support scalable vector graphics,' he told the agency.

'I'll let you figure out which one has been slow in supporting SVG.' Firefox, Safari and Google's new browser Chrome all support SVG, while Microsoft prefers a different format called Vector Markup Language - despite W3C giving SVG its support since 2001.

If IE users want to display SVG they need an Adobe plug-in, which is set to have its support ended on January 1st."

Translation And Pipelining Applied To End-User Programming

This research involves using Semantic Web technologies to enable end user programming. This technology is applicable to any problem that involves user interaction, so can be applied in industries and home use for any task or subject area.

The work involves allowing non-programmers to model complex problems visually and without having to use programming languages. Information is created in a visual tree using an Ontology editor, the information is then transformed, and all calculations performed. Further transformations can be performed into any programming language or open standard information representation language, and this can be displayed on the web. This approach can be described as 'pipelining', which is explained by Gropp (2003) using the example of a project to convert Geography Markup Language (GML) to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG is explained by McKeown and Grimson (2000). Pipelining is also core to XML (eXtensible Markup Language) (w3C, 2006) and XForms technologies (Bruchez, 2006), which are explained in this thesis. Pipelines are important for translation and Meta Programming techniques I use as they apply one program to the results of another. Also transformations can be performed between a tree representation and other styles of representation e.g. an interactive CAD style representation, using SVG. A major theme of the research is that of prototyping solutions to the problems raised, using web and other software technologies. These are then referenced from the thesis document to illustrate the solutions discussed.

The additional advantage is that of displaying the expressions in the appropriate context. Crapo et al (2002) explain that visualization helps the modeller to maintain a hierarchy of submodels at different stages of development and to navigate effectively between them, this is my reason for breaking down the models into a tree structure.

Semantic Web research has been developed from the work of Tim Berners-Lee (1997). Uschold (2003) defines the Semantic Web as being machine usable and associated with more meaning. Semantic web technologies and the use of agents and ontologies are explained by Hendler (2001) and Uschold who explains that "In order to carry out their required tasks, intelligent agents must communicate and understand meaning".

Meta programming is the writing of programs that write or manipulate other programs (or themselves) as their data. The idea behind this technique is that instead of writing programs to do a task a person needs the program for, the meta program developer creates an environment which all domain experts, in this and similar fields, can use to create their own solutions. The developer then only needs to maintain and improve this programming environment, and can concentrate on this task; the domain expert can concentrate on solving the problem at hand without having to ask the developer to create the code on his or her behalf. This can prevent problems of misunderstanding, delay, and expense that often result from communication of difficult concepts between people who are experts in different areas (domain expert and programming expert).

This is another useful article on sharing RSS feeds via linked up pipes (Yahoo Pipes) -

Pipes and Filters for the Internet-http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/pipes_and_filte.html.

This approach could make it easier for web developers to build interacive websites without needing to do in depth coding.

References

Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1997. Weaving the Web. Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X

Bruchez, E, 2006. XForms: an Alternative to Ajax?. In: XTech 2006: Building Web 2.0 16-19 May 2006, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.

Gropp, E., 2003. Accelerating SVG Transformations with Pipelines. In: SVG Open 2003 - Conference and Exhibition 2nd Annual Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics - Vancouver, Canada.

Hendler, J., 2001. Agents and the Semantic Web. IEEE Intelligent Systems Journal.

McKeown, J., Grimson, J., 2000. SVG: putting XML in the picture In: XML Europe 2000 Paris France.

Uschold, M., 2003. Where are the semantics in the semantic web? AI Magazine Vol 24 (3) pp 25-36.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), 2006. http://www.w3.org/TR/xproc/ XProc: An XML Pipeline Language W3C Working Draft 17 November 2006.

I am developing a project to provide free online collaborative modelling tools.

My Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/

My Blog - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/

My SVG Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/SVG/SVG.htm