Visualization of structural steel product models

Abstract

A visual interface has been developed to provide a means for users to visualize the steel structure represented by a CIMsteel Integration Standards Release 2 (CIS/2) file. A CIS/2 file provides for the electronic exchange of data directly between various steel CAD software applications. Using a web-accessible translator, objects in a user’s CIS/2 file are mapped to application-specific VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) nodes in an VRML file that can be interactively navigated in 3D using freely available VRML browsers. Salient features of the web-base user interface and application-specific VRML nodes related to CIS/2 are described with several examples. The interface has proved useful to both software application developers and end-users.