EADS Innovation Works metadata management system based on X3D
The Challenge
While the tool chain and data management is very strict in later phases of aircraft design, there is a plurality of tools and data formats in preliminary development. This allows greater flexibility and creativity, but is hard to handle. The challenge was to develop a concept how to set up a metadata management system, which allows consolidation of information from heterogeneous data sources for collaboration, authoring, searches and easy reusability.
The Solution
EADS Innovation Works created a metadata management system using a 3D model-centric approach based on X3D and MPEG-4. While other data formats have better support for CAD data conversion (Dassault 3DXML, Actify .3D) and their corresponding viewers offer a good basic set of interaction methods (Spinfire), the main advantages of X3D turned out to be:
- Open ISO standard
- Easy transformation of XML documents to a graphical representation using XSLT and heavy use of X3D prototypes
- Easy development of customized interaction methods, views and user interfaces
- Easy merging of X3D-Browser into the metadata management system
It was possible to meet most of the requirements using pure X3D functionality and an arbitrary X3D-Browser. Using the new X3D CAD structure nodes enabled a straightforward structuring of the scene. This allows differing between geometrical grouping and logical grouping. However, due to the necessity of a browser extension for Drag&Drop functionality and inconsistent interfaces for Scene Access through HTML-sided JavaScript - but also because of our good experiences - we decided to use Bitmanagement BS Contact Viewer.