Armidale Class Patrol Boat 3D Interactive Walkthrough

Invenio Engineering Solutions and Navy Engineering Division are helping to define the delivery of scenario-based training on-board Armidale Class Patrol Boats (ACPB) for the Royal Australian Navy, using Invenio's REFINE concept. REFINE -- an acronym for Real time Engineering Fleet-training Interactive Naval Environment has been developed by Invenio using Dassault Systemes' software. http://refine.invenio.com.au This unique interactive training capability resulted in Invenio's appointment to develop a 3D interactive model of the Royal Australian Navy's Armidale Class Patrol Boat. Used initially to demonstrate the benefits of this technology, the ACPB 3D Interactive Model can be used as a baseline platform to deliver online induction training, with the option to extend to REFINE's full capabilities. Dassault Systemes' 3DVIA Studio, a triple-A rated game engine was chosen for this project specifically for its ability to directly import CAD geometry, both in the file-neutral STEP format and natively from Dassault Systemes' CATIA 3D CAD platform. In a typical game development workflow, 3D CAD data is too detailed and "heavy" to import directly into a game engine, requiring the data to be completely re-modelled into optimised polygons. As the inevitable engineering design changes arise at the source 3D CAD level, the optimised polygon re-modelling process needs to be repeated to incorporate those changes. This is a manual process, adding a substantial resource effort to a project and ultimately increasing the time and cost of delivery. With 3DVIA Studio, the remodelling of CAD data into optimised polygons is automated and efficient, completed in the export process which removes a large component of development time and cost from the project. Adding value, any changes to the source 3D CAD data can be automatically propagated to the 3DVIA Studio project and any subsequent interactivity contained within. Also, through the development and delivery of a 3DVIA Studio project, the customer not only receives immersive interactive content, it also receives a maintained engineering 3D CAD model.