Geometry and rendering optimizations for the interactive visualization of crash-worthiness simultations
Ove Sommer, Thomas Ertl · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2000
Todays car body models used for crash-worthiness simulations consist of around half a million finite elements. The interactive visualization of these large scale time- dependent geometries with constant topology on workstations platforms requires a variety of modeling an rendering optimizations. We present a memory efficient scene graph design, an algorithm to concatenate the mainly four-sided elements into optical quadrilateral strips, and a simplifier which generates an approximating triangle mesh by using the one-sided Hausdorff distance as an error measure. Furthermore we describe a technique to explore scalar data mapped onto complex scenes by hiding geometry with values outside an interactively specified range of interest. These optimizations allow for the first time interactive visualization of a full car crash on medium range graphics workstations. They are embedded in an application which is based on Cosmo3D/OpenGl Optimizer. It was developed in close cooperation with the BMW Group and it is in productive use.