Functional Space: An Approach to Build Usable Virtual Worlds from CAD MegaModels

Voluminous CAD models are produced in industry and architecture to design complex mechanical and architectural structures. The use of these models to set up virtual worlds is a rather tedious and laborious work. To simplify this task, we have combined a series of tools which help us to build in a rapid and e cient way virtual world experiments from complex CAD models. These tools perform various operations such as de ning the objects which populate the scene, grouping similar objects in categories, giving shape, physical and functional attributes to these categories, de ning activities by a set of tasks to perform and a set of means to use, reducing graphics computations by various techniques: use of levels of detail and of culling methods. The resulting virtual world can be visualized in various interactive ways.