Researches And Developments On Urban Pipe Utility 3D Visualization Service Framework

3D visualization has become an important characteristic of urban pipe utility management system at present. Pipe utility management, especially 3D visualization management is a hot issue in the area of urban pipe utility management. With the development of 3D visualization theory and computer technology, pipe utility visualization management applications become larger and more complex, so its development process needs the support of the software engineering approach and technique urgently.Software framework technique is an effective approach to dealing with the complexity of applications in development. On the other hand, the service-oriented theory which advocates packaging software systems as services and providing them to users in the form of lease has taken more and more attention. In this article, we studied software framework related technologies and service-oriented theory, and then raised the concept of service framework, as well as its development and application process model.To deal with the complexity and difficulties during design and development of urban pipe utility 3D visualization applications, this article concentrates an approach with service framework. Based on service framework development process model, we obtain the field common requirements through analysis of two urban pipe utility visualization applications with domain analysis technology. Then the domain requirement model including requirements on pipe utility 3D display, query and spatial analysis is set up. According to the spatial characteristic of pipe utility, urban pipe utility 3D visualization information model is designed as well.Referring to the analysis on existing applications and domain requirement model, the design of Urban Pipe Utility 3D Visualization Service Framework was given and realized with Java 3D technology. Urban Pipe Utility 3D Visualization Service Framework includes number of functional units such as workflow control, data process, 3D modeling and spatial analysis to deal with urban pipe utility 3D visualization requirements. A Pipe-unit 3D Template Library Service is involved to simplify 3D modeling operation as well.The last part elaborates the process of rebuilding the 3D visualization application in Municipal Pipe Network Management System with Urban Pipe Utility 3D Visualization Service Framework, and then gives a preliminary evaluation of it. The application of Urban Pipe utility 3D Visualization Service Framework demonstrates that it is a service framework with ease of use, extensibility, flexibility, and consistency, which can support the development of related applications well.