PDExperts

Display Sets are a method in which you can control the display colour of 3D model objects within ModelInsight. Most 3D viewers have this functionality, however there are a couple of improvements in ModelInsight. The easy of use is the first thing that I noticed, a simple interface that allows you to create a display search criteria by simply adding more display set search controls. To build your display set is a case of selecting the model attribute type that you wish e.g. equipment number, line number etc. Then select your search condition e.g. equals, wildcard etc. The next thing to do is enter your text string or select your text string from the list. This is the nice feature that I like, if you select equipment number from the model attributes list then this filters the text list to just display equipment numbers, or you can start typing and the list will automatically reduce to only display equipment numbers that match your typed text. Even though this is not a ground breaking advancement, it does make creating display sets quicker. The other feature I liked, is the ability to visually highlight model objects in your 3D view that match your display set criteria prior to saving. This gives you the ability to check your display set and repeatedly amend the display set until you are happy with the results.

Display sets are saved to your ModelInsight database so that they can be reloaded later in another session. The good thing with the display sets are that when you load a model ModelInsight will automatically search your new model data and your display set will identify any changes to the model since you created your display set and consider those changes. This ensures that your display set changes the colour of the correct model objects.

3D viewers today are used for a number of uses, they are used as a day-to-day tool to easily visualise the model in a 3D rendered environment, creation of realistic model images and the most important, formal model reviews. Formal model reviews are a key stage in any all projects as it provides the opportunity to review the model and discuss, resolve and improve are where possible areas such as constructability, access, safety and the list goes on. This is in my opinion an area that is overlooked by software vendors even though it is such an important aspect. Ticodi has identified this niche in the market when they released their ReviewInsight software back in 2006 (read a review on this here) and have taken ReviewInsight a stage further by fully integrating it into ModelInsight. This integration has produced a very powerful model comment management tool which is rich in 3D features.

To create a model comment from within ModelInsight requires you to firstly login to your ReviewInsight project from within ModelInsight. Once you have logged in then you are able to create, view, action and approve model comments using the integrated ReviewInsight suit of tools. To create a comment is very quick and easy, you simply identify your design object that the comment is in relation to, and complete the ReviewInsight add comment form. The information that you are able to enter is discipline responsible, deadline date, construction area, type of comment, description, required action to resolve the comment, and more. Once you have entered this information you save the comment and this automatically captures a 2D image of the comment, stores the camera position so that you can easily navigate back to the exact same view when created and if you choose to will save a clipped 3D data volume around your selected model object. This 3D data volume allows users of ReviewInsight to open your comment in a 3D environment without the need for ModelInsight or the native model files. Your comment can be viewed within ReviewInsight therefore allowing the full functionality of ReviewInsight to be used to manage your comment.

Model comments that have been created within ModelInsight can be view by using the integrated ReviewInsight view comments form. This displays all comments with a large amount of information that enables you to filter by, for example, if you wanted to only view unapproved comments you can. On selecting a comment the integrated ReviewInsight comment information form is displayed that provides more detailed information on the comment, for example, a log of the action taken by designers to resolve the comment. To navigate to the comment location within your ModelInsight 3D view is a simple case of selecting a comment and clicking the Change View button. This automatically takes you back to the original view when the comment was first created.

You have the ability to approve model comments which gives you the flexibility to be able to review a model comment, and if in agreement with how the comment is resolved you can approve the comment there and then. The approval functionality then will automatically capture a 2D screen shot and again gives you the option of saving a 3D data volume of the model. This provides you with a complete history of your comment, allowing you to not only visually see a 2D screen image of the comment when created and when approved, but also allows you to view corresponding 3D clipped volume data. This provides you with a complete comment history from start to finish, thus providing a complete audit trail.