FIATECH webinars

As I promised here the link for the webinar below. It was good to listen to it, although it didn't report me many new ideas. In the other hand it confirmed a few ideas I had like the need of OpenGL to have real time 3D or that the integration of 3D viewers with other application is a must to obtain the maximun from the 3D application, otherwise it could just become a nice to have tool.

In addition I would like to comment the next years exibition that Fiatech is doing (See the screenshot).

Digital Assets: Real Time Environments for Real Time Projects
FIATECH Webminars

Digital Assets: Real Time Environments for Real Time Projects

There is a nice webminar that will take part today. I'll do a few comment after it.
You can still reserve a sit if you wish:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/957875529

3D terrains

In the last weeks I’ve hearing the idea of including big high resolution terrain textures within the 3D models in a 3D visualization Software, to allow the end user have a realistic idea of the environment where the 3D model is located. There are many ways, as always, to do this but all of them are at the expenses of others.

From one side there is the Google earth method, which uses different textures to visualize the different areas that are in view. As the end user zooms in, a bigger resolution image for the specific area is loaded. I’m not an expert but I’m quite sure that this is not very difficult to do, although it’s probably quite laborious and expensive as many textures are required from the satellite. In addition every time the terrain changes the work needs to be done.

In the other hand, there is another way that is probably much more difficult to develop, which is based in the idea of streaming the texture area that is needed. This technique is much cheaper when getting the texture (only one is needed and no extra work), although it’s probably more expensive to develop. Of course, once developed, this can be used for any texture.

Another technique that is being used in the 3D visualization is to reduce the texture resolution until it’s the one supported by the graphics card during the export to the specific format. The problem here is that the graphic cards vary from one Computer to another and, although the minimum acceptable nowadays is 2K*2K, there already many graphics cards supporting better resolutions. Of course the vendors need to take these limits into account and have to take a difficult decision; go for the save option and only allow 2K*2K textures or allow the user to use the maximum of his graphics card? Of course the second option seems to be the good one but (there is always a but) if this user the gives the 3D model to another one with a lower specs graphics card it will make it not to work properly.

I’m sure that there are many other nice ways to fix this problem but this are the ones I have faced myself.

Below some numbers:

A. 16K*16K resolution texture (very very high resolution) --> Expensive and great for huge terrains
B. 8K*8K resolution texture (very high resolution à 4 times less than A)
C. 4K*4K resolution texture (high resolution à 16 times less than A)
D. 2K*2K resolution texture (high resolution à 64 times less than A) --> Very cheap and bad for big terrains

Some thought about the 3D training

There are many different reasons that make training very important when it comes to the Oil & Gas industry.

One of the main problems that these big companies, as well as Nuclear or Chemical big companies, are facing is the impossibility to do the training in a real environment, as it could cost a lot of money. Although there is no way that a new operator, it doesn’t really matter the area he/she will work on; will be allowed to start working in the real facility without a previous training.

Up to now it was almost impossible to have a real 3D model of the Plant because, as I have mentioned in previous posts, there was no way to have complete 3D plant rendered on a PC, with enough performance to have a realistic environment. Therefore 2D or faked 3D worlds were used, losing the big advantage of working in a real model.

Again, thanks to the new technologies applied to the 3D and a bunch of incredible developers that love graphics, this is starting to become a reality.
There are already a few applications that are starting to integrate with each other in order to have a realistic environment that could cover from a simple Operator routine, where the trainee would have to go around the plant to learn the path he would need to go through in the real environment; to a real shut down where many alarms would need to be controlled and understand in order to proceed in the correct way. These applications are called with different name like OTS (Operational Training System), ITS (Inmersive Training System)...

In addition to the standard 3D training , that is already very useful, were many operators could get trained together, promoting communication and team work, there is also the possibility to have all these in an immersive environment, so the operator really “feels” that he’s walking inside the plant.
I think this is very interesting topic that I’ll keep writing about as there are many things that I keep learning every day.

Managing Operational, Safety and Compliance Risk with Effective Asset Information Management (AIM)

I've found this video quite interesting if you are interested in the integration of different sites or units of a big company. They explain a bit what they are working on at the moment and how they would like to achieve the project.

They put a big emphasis on the concept of keeping always all the information updated and link different sites information so that information can become very useful to everyone.

This is the same idea of the last post I did related to the 3D models and the importance of keeping them updated so everyone access the latest version of the model, to avoid making wrong decision that may cost a lot of money.

http://fiatech.org/webinar-archives/369-september-15.html

GIS and 3D SW

Usually, or better said, always, big companies have more than one site that they need to have under control. These sites, of course, are not collocated around the same area and but still it’s useful if there is a way of visualizing all of them in one go using a map. Nowadays these maps, similar to the ones of Google earth or other companies like ESRI, are available to be used. The cool thing about these maps is that information can be added to them generating an intelligent map or GIS map. When this GIS maps are integrated with a 3D visualization SW we can get the full system dreamed by any operator. On one side they can check if there are any alarms on any the sites that need to be controlled in a very big area. On the other, when there is an alarm it’s very easy and intuitive to navigate into the model to check the exact equipment that is producing the alarm.
As said when these systems are integrated together, operators will resolve one of the big challenges that have nowadays; capability to review all the sites that are many km away from each other and the capability to immerse into one specific site to inspect a detected alarm, and all this on just one click, or even less.

Laser Scan and 3D modeling

As the 3D is getting more important in some of the big Oil&Gas compnies, the need to get realistic 3D models is becoming a pain to most of the managers. The main problem comes when the plant to virtually visualize is very old, may be from the 60s or 70s of last century, when of course there was no 3D modeling at all like there is nowadays, in most of the companies. To face this problem some companies offer scanning services that can do very interesting work. Of course, scanning the whole plant and viewing it as a pointcloud, is not enough for most of these big companies as the final idea is far more ambitious than just visualizing it. As I have commented in previous posts, the final idea is always integration with other SWs and DBs. In order to do this, these scanning companies are also evolving to include in their services what is being called “modeler”, to allow the end user to obtain the 3D data as polygons instead of 3D points. These modeling tools are just semiautomatic and require quite some time to model a whole plant, although they are becoming a real need to get valid 3D data that can be really integrated.

I leave a nice post about laser scanning of one of my colleagues:

http://engineervr.blogspot.com/2009/06/laser-scan-side-note.html

Offshore Europe 2009

In a couple weeks one of the most importants Oil&GAS conference will start in Aberdeen.

Apart from talking about all the non technical issues related to the Oil&Gas world, there will also be some areas related to the latest technology used that will probably be very interesting.

I leave here the link in case someone can attend to it.

http://www.offshore-europe.co.uk/

A realistic 3D inmersion

Shell, Rijswijk - 3D Reality Center

Barco.com

It has to be great to work on one of those big companies that have a complete virtual reality room where you can test all the new technology that comes out. Lately I've been working with some of those, just helping to set up a new environment and it seems that the big Oil&Gas companies are taking it seriously with heavy configurations of VR centers. As far as I know Barco's technology is being one of the most used technology for the momment.

http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/pressreleases/show.asp?index=1568

This technology can be very useful to do review meetings during construction phase or training. I guess that it is fun to get a training in one of these :)

3D meetings

I just downloaded the latest version of skype and for my good suprise I can share my screen. As soon as I saw this I got in contact with a collegue through skype and run Walkinside SW from VRcontext (this is the company I work for). Normally walkinside was well handled by tools like webex, which is the official tool we use to do 3D Meetings when we need to share 3D models.
I was very happy to see that skype was meeting by far many of my expectations and I could share my screen quite well. This is going to be a very useful tool for me although there is still a feature that I think is key for real 3D meetings, which is to allow the attendants to get the control of the screen, I guess you can't ask for everything in the first release :).
Just in case you're interested there are other tools from adobe (which is free), gotomeeting, vnc... but these I found not good enough when sharing 3D content.
By last I would like to mention IBM's DCV which is probably the best tool in performance but may also be the most expensive one :)

Keeping the models updated

On all the projects communication and collaboration among all the members that are in the project is a key factor in order to have a successful end.
When talking about project documents, the collaboration implies that everyone in the project is using the same updated document.

Why? To avoid that two members of the same project work on different documents that don’t imply taking the same actions.

In the 3D world the same can be applied but it’s not usually the case. Normally, as the 3D models are not “official” there may be different versions of the same model the different project members are using in order to take actions and decisions.

But as said in my previous post, when handling 3D models, these need to be always updated with the latest version. When this is correctly done, end users will feel confident at the moment of taking decision or acting; otherwise these models won’t be trusted and therefore won’t be used in the important moments.

At this point there are many tools to share updated documents like for example SharePoint from Microsoft or just Google docs where you can store documents.

In the 3D world this is not so simple because the file size can be huge (over 1GB) which of course can’t be easily download over the internet. To avoid this big downloads different vendors have chosen different techniques like data streaming, virtualization and others.

As you can see there are different ways of doing this but what it’s a must is that you make sure you’re always using the latest version of the model (even if you’re just using an ftp site to have them under control)

Is 3D really needed

Actually I do think that 3D is not just something that can be called luxury anymore.
As Jeff Winston, The Use of 3D Visualization in Planning and Design—Is 3D a luxury or a necessity? The 3D world can help to make decisions easier or can help people to have a better understanding of a "hidden" or no existing world, that at the moment is just virtually available.
In addition many inexpensive tools are available to share these 3D models that are created.

Some tools

When talking about VR there are some tools that can be used.
As I said in previous posts, it depends on the momment; the end user could require different tools as it's not the same to require just a tool to check the work done during the design, as the one to merge the whole project into one big model, etc...
During the first phase of design, the engineers have their own tools that dependant on their design tools and others that are more independant and support quite well different file formats.

Big project in 3D (Part III)

Following the last post

While the construction of the platform or refinery is being done, the management should already start thinking about training the operators that will be running the plant in the future. Nowadays it’s very difficult to start the training before the plant is completely finished in an environment that could really reflect the daily work that these field operators and control room operators may need to do. This issue is basically solved if the 3D model can be used to train these people.

In addition to the mentioned SW tools that enable the 3D visualization, there other tools that can also be integrated in order to complete a whole Operation Training System (OTS) where the control room operators can really interact with the field operators in order to reproduce virtually real problems that may need to be solved in the future plant. Of course, there is no need to say that these operators will be able to meet and learn the structure of the plant before this is built, which can be a very important factor in order to save time (and money) during the start up of the plant.

The next step after the construction and the training of the plant operators would be the start up of the plant itself. This is a very important moment in the plant life because is the moment where it really starts to function. Although the 3D model may not be critical during this phase, it’s also true that can help to remotely understand what is being done as, if the 3D model is well integrated in the SCADA system of the plant it can reflect any change during the start up.

After the start up phase, we enter in the production phase where the 3D model as built can again take a very important relevance. During the production phase there are many departments that could use the 3D model.
It’s very important that the 3D model is well integrated with the SCADA system and all the internal document management systems, why? Because once the 3D model is integrated with these two important systems, basically anyone who is using these, will be able to take advantage of the 3D model, saving time and money when decisions are taken.
Finally I would like to mention that the 3D models can also be used for safety simulation where different scenarios can be built in order to see how the attendants to the simulation react on different difficult situations.

Big project in 3D (Part II)

Following the previous post, in the following (I hope that no more than 2) I would like to write about that part of the life of a big platform, refinery ..., where it could be useful to have 3D models available.

In fact my experience tells me that over the whole lifetime of these mega-structures it might be useful to have a 3D model. This would help on each moment, with the help of specific SW and HW to make the right decisions more quickly and easily than in the past where only 2D models were used.

Here I mentioned the SW, which is key for each of the different stages. It is likely that the SW suitable to the design of the plant is not the same as the one to be used during the production phase, but that is another story that will come in the future.

In this post I'll just go over the different stages of the life cycle of the mega-structures and in subsequent posts I will think long and hard at phases that are of my interest, like the review, the training of operators, production, Subsea equipment and seabed and a few more that may be of other people's interest.

When deciding to undertake a project of this type of mega-structure, one of the first steps is to make the design. The truth is that at this stage, the 3D world is already being used and there are very strong SW tools to help designers to capture even the smallest detail.
This stage is usually done by an engineering company that is subcontracted by a large company. Therefore, it is usual to carry out inspections at different stages of the design (30%, 60%, 90% -100%) in which both parties take part.

Once the design is finished, the construction phase starts, which usually also carries out the engineering firm. For this phase, the use of 3D models is not too widespread, because currently no major 3D models can be carried comfortably into the construction area. Using 3D models could help constructors to quickly check if they are actually building exactly what is was designed and approved in the previous phase.

To be continue ....

Big project in 3D

We are currently growing interest in the world of large 3D models, why? For the simple fact that we opened a new dimension that was previously hidden and nobody was able to see on paper.

We should thank the development of HW and SW in general, as it allows us to access this virtual world that otherwise be hidden to our eyes.
The great problem and challenge of this technology is the lack of models that are valid . It's not worthy to have a model that is not updated with the reality. Unlike the 2D models, 3D models are not signed in the enterprises, what make that no one really cares, in general, if they are correct or to keep them updated.
This is why, one of the first steps to be taken would be to make sure that the models that will be used are the correct and updated with the latest changes of the real plant. For this, is a must that it exist person in charge of keeping the models updated.

Where are these 3D models being used really?
It exist a big variety of sectors that are using 3D models, some of them sice long time like the automobile industry ; although when we talk about buig models, we are talking about models that may represent refineries, onshore and offshore platforms, whole cities...

Due to this it's easy to imagine that, at this moment, the companies that could really take big advantage of this technology are the big Oil&Gas companies, big Engineering companies (EPC) as well as big building companies. (In Korea there is a company that creates and models entire cities, with rivers, parks, houses...)

In the next posts I would like to talk a bit about the life cycle of this type of big projects and where the 3D models can help to coordinate and to make the right decisions on time.

Seminario del proceso U

Este fin de semana he asistido a u seminario de la teoria U.
Basicamente es un proceso de toma de decisiones en el que la clave que lo diferencia de otras tecnicas que he estudiado es el hecho de que hay que llegar a un estado en el que la solución ha de comenzar a fraguarse desde un estado inferior (desde los sentimientos propios).
Además del proceso en si, lo que más me ha impactado es el método que se ha utilizado a la hora de impartir el seminario.
Éste se ha impartido en Amalurra, una casa rural con unos terrenos privilegiados que ayudaban en todo momento a entrar realmente dentro de ti mismo y llegar a conclusiones que, aunque sabidas de ante mano, quiza no estaban realmente claras.
Me gustaría mencionar a las dos personas que lo han hecho posibleJudith Flick (directora de un programa global contra el SIDA de Oxfam UK y a Javier Ruiz Director Adjunto de la Unidad de Sistemas de Innovación de Tecnalia.
Habra que seguir investigando en el proceso, pero lo que más claro me ha quedado es que este tipo de experiencias en las que se va un poco más hallá de lo físico, merecen la pena para desconectar del mundo, rápido y competitivo en el que vivimos y resituarnos en él desde un pensamiento diferente, casi desde otro lugar.
Lo intentaré repetir por lo menos 1 vez al año.

teoria de la U

Hoy me he enterardo de la teoria de la U. No se muy bien de que va pero igual me hago un seminario. Haber si asi me entero un poco pq parece que me ayudaria a tomar decisiones en el futuro.

GPU GMA 500 de intel

parece ser que la GMA 500 de intel no soporta aceleracion del hardware 3D al menos para windows XP en su ultimo driver. Sin embargo en su pagina web dicen que si. Asi que cuidado al comprar un notebook con esta targeta grafica que no os den gato por liebre :)
Aqui os dejo un link para que le deis otra ojeada a lo que se dice por los foros.
http://forum.pocketables.net/showthread.php?t=3290

Kaixo/Hola/Hello/

Hola a todos los que lean este blog.
A partir de hoy escribire, cuanto pueda, a ver hasta donde me lleva.
En un principio quiero que sea un blog donde poder hablar de mis estudios ( master de direccion de proyectos) asi como del curro en el que estoy, empresa de SW de visualizacion 3D (VRcontext).
Intentare introducir cosas relacionadas a ambos mundos y a ver que es lo que sale.
Todo Blogger es bienvenido e intentare responder a todo el mundo.

Bueno lo dicho, a jugar.