Using semantics to improve the compression and interactive visualisation of large plant models

Large Model Visualisation for industrial plant review is a well researched area in Computer Graphics. The possibility to have interactive walkthroughs for these very large geometric datasets offers clear benefits as it reduces design time and allows the engineers and designers to detect potential problems in the early stages of the construction phase. A common characteristic of most LMV approaches is to work on the basis of the already tessellated CAD model by applying advanced CG techniques. No special attention is given to the fact that these models were originally composed of a defined set of repeating engineering parts that do have semantics. The semantic information about these parts is already lost during the conversion process from the CAD to the VR model, valuable information that may improve the visualisation and compression significantly. The developed techniques are included into the MiroWalk LMV walkthrough system that allows interactive walkthrough of plant models on desktop-class hardware.