Integration techniques for distributed visualization within a Virtual Prototyping Environment

The goal of the Virtual Prototyping Environment (VPE) is to decrease product development time and costs and to increase quality and flexibility by providing continuous computer support for the development cycle. Virtual prototypes are directly derived from integrated CAD-Systems and enriched with simulation data. In addition, the VPE supports cooperative teams by providing different Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) techniques of shared viewing environments in combination with further communication tools for long distance collaboration. One aspect of CSCW in VPE's is multi-user and multi-application Shared 3D Environments. In the shared environment model, three-dimensional objects from different applications can be joined into one scene that can be viewed by different users with independent or shared camera positions, enabling the distribution of visualization tasks between smaller, flexible and more specialized applications. The underlying product model of the VPE ist based o n the STEP standard applied to a distributed object-oriented data management approach. Taking the requirements from CE and shared 3D environments into account, we enriched the application interface to the data management with high level concepts such as object versioning, migration and consistency management, and extended the product data model to include presentation and annotation aspects.