Menu
▾
▴
February Requirements Analysis
Table of Contents
Geometry and Data Analysis Requirements Gathering
The majority of this past iteration has been spent analyzing, gathering requirements, and prototyping capabilities for real-time geometry viewing and dynamic data analysis. Here is an attempt to provide a brief recap of these efforts.
Data Analysis Capability
A lot of time and energy was spent thinking, reasoning, and gathering possible functionality requirements for the data analysis piece. Through team discussions, as well as discussions with possible stakeholders, a very specific set of needed functionality was developed. The analysis piece should provide users the ability to display their data in a number of different formats: XY scatter plots, contour plots, histogram and other statistical plots, and three dimensional surface plots. In addition to these, the user should be able to perform a number of mathematical operations on their data: statistical operations like calculate averages and standard deviations, analytic operations like numerical differentiation and integration, and extrapolation techniques such as linear regression. These default plots formats and mathematical operations are a great start to any data analysis suite, but NiCE envisions the ability for users to implement their own plots and operations. This will be implemented through a object model that involves abstract plot and operator classes with generalized behavior common to every plot or operator. In this way, a NiCE user can subclass these and get whatever functionality they desire. The analysis capability is also envisioned to incorporate dynamic, real-time data visualization, as most users would like to see their data evolve and change in time.
Geometry Construction and Manipulation Capability
As for the geometry capability, the NiCE development team would like to offer users the ability to construct simulation models through an interactive, dynamic, and fully three dimensional geometry viewing window. Simple drag and drop and mouse manipulation can be used to construct complex geometries that can then be integrated, together with material information, into a users simulation. This capability has been discussed and envisioned for awhile now, and is already in the prototyping phase. The development team has chosen JMonkeyEngine 3, an open source Java scene-graph engine, to power its 3D geometry viewing window. Since it is written purely in Java, it is highly accessible and can be easily ported to a number of devices, including Android based phones and tablets. Through this engine, users should be able to create a number of default and custom shapes, manipulate them in the 3D viewer, and then incorporate them into simulations. Currently, the prototyping effort is focusing on how to efficiently incorporate a JMonkey viewing window into NiCE’s SWT graphical user interface.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a lot was achieved in regards to these two efforts over the past iteration. With these critical insights and prototypes, integration of these capabilities into NiCE should be fairly straightforward. The NiCE development team looks forward to any comments, questions, or additional requirements thoughts any stakeholders or users might have.
Participants Section
Alex McCaskey
