What is a visual information systems company, anyway?
Dee: I’ve always enjoyed drawing things, so what our company does is make computerized drawings of all kinds of things. When we draw large nature-made objects, like the earth or a country or an ocean’s features, we call them digital maps and refer to the data as geospatial data. When we draw smaller, man-made objects, such as city blocks, buildings or infrastructure, and things that stand outside those buildings, like ships, planes, tanks and trucks, we call them engineering drawings or 3-dimensional solid models. Such vector data sets are stored in databases, which can be queried, so the front-end mapping or computer-aided design (CAD) software can pull the relevant data from the databases and draw the associated objects on the fly, in response to the queries. These vector data sets that we have converted, captured or created, along with the databases and front-end software applications, comprise our visual information systems and make us the visual information systems company we are.
Scott: The key to all of these types of data is that they are presented VISUALLY. The visual or graphical representation of data typically takes one of three forms.
- A realistic rendering of real-world objects, be they cars or continents, that can be used to show precisely how those objects appear or will appear. Much of our recent work has focused on creating accurate 3D models of buildings that are textured with actual photographs of the sides/tops of the buildings. However, we also capture the data in true 3-D CAD and perform destructive simulations on the structures and render realistic animations of blast damage to those same buildings.
- A representative rendering of objects or features for informative purposes. For example, a street map never shows the streets in a “realistic” manner with photo-realistic pavement, manholes, and markings, rather the map shows where the streets center lines are located and typically represents major streets with bolder lines or brighter colors than minor streets.
- Visualization of more abstract concepts, such as charts of numeric data. For engineering data, the product (airplane, ship, etc.) may be represented with accurate geometry, but the cost to manufacture each part may be represented by different colors applied to those geometries. Of course, 3D pie charts and the like also fall into this category, but we don’t involve ourselves with stuff like that!
Do you see TechniGraphics expanding its services under this banner in the future and, if so, can you tell us what these will encompass?
Scott: Well, we love to expand our offerings, so yes! We absolutely will extend the breadth of our visual information systems business. One area of intense R&D for us is that of multi-dimensional (i.e., more than 3-D) data visualization. Imagine a residential building: not only does it exist in 3-dimensional space, but its very nature changes with time; internal walls appear and disappear, exterior colors change, windows get replaced. So there’s a time dimension that impacts the 3-D geometry. But you must also realize that there are alternative dimensions to consider (no, nothing from science fiction…yet). For instance, each structural element has an associated construction cost, or maintenance cost, or lifespan, or change in strength with time, etc. Further, there are changes in geometry and physical properties brought about by some external event (my favorite part) such as an explosion. As a blast strikes the building, pieces deform and change in location or disappear, strengths of many materials are reduced by heat, and obviously, the lifespan of some elements ends. What we are doing is building a data structure that allows search and display across all dimensions so that I could ask the question: “which piece of this building was moved the furthest from its constructed location and how much did I pay for the other pieces of the building that were supposed to hold it in place?” Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to buy those factory-reject I-beams for a low, low price!
Dee: We would also like to get into rendering and simulating in 3-D invisible things, such as electromagnetic waves or radioactivity or underground plumes of pollution in aquifers used for drinking water. Newer areas of modeling relationships between people in large populations as predictors of terrorist activities or profitabilities of certain consumer segments depicted as peaks in a 3-D terrain model, from which you could just “grab” a peak set of data to understand its demography, are areas into which we would love to expand our services.
Which industries would benefit most from your offerings?
Scott: There is a lot of work going on in the construction industry and I am particularly intrigued by the very practical research performed at the University of Salford (http://ndmodelling.scpm.
salford.ac.uk/). The buildingSMART Alliance (http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (http://www.opengeospatial.org/), both of which include TechniGraphics as a member, lead the efforts underway in development of foundation technology for effective implementation and dissemination of multi-dimensional data. We participate in the standards development and will use these standards to provide services to a wide audience.
Dee: Our traditional customers in the defense and intelligence communities would benefit greatly from the new offerings. In addition, the civilian federal side would derive huge benefits, as well, particularly in agencies such as the General Services Administration (GSA), which owns most of the buildings that belong to the federal government. Finally, the telecommunications and even consumer products industries would benefit, when we are able to analyze their profitability data and determine how it ties in with consumer demographics.
