Research article

Distributed parallel virtual assembly environment for automobile development

Zhen Xijin, Wu Dianliang, Fan Xiumin and Hu Yong
CIM Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Abstract Purpose Automobile development needs more and more collaborative work involving geographical dispersed designers, that brings difculty for model verication, conception review and assembly process evaluation, so a collaborative virtual environment for automobile based on network is required. In this kind of environment, designers can do interactive assembly operations collaboratively, such as grasp, move, release, collision detection (CD), assembly evaluation report generation, etc. Furthermore, automobile structure becomes more complicated, how to process this large real-time data effectively in real-time interactive virtual environment is a great challenge. The purpose of this paper is focus on this. Design/methodology/approach A distributed parallel virtual assembly environment (DPVAE) is developed. In this environment, the mechanism of event synchronization based on high-level architecture/run-time infrastructure) is applied to realize multi-user collaboratively interactive operation. To meet the large data set real-time processing demand, a creative parallel processing approach supported by a single supercomputer or a parallel processing environment composed of common personal computer in a high-speed local area network is developed. The technologies such as real-time CD, multiple interactive operation modals are applied in DPVAE and several auxiliary tools are provide to help achieving whole scheme review, component model verication and assembly evaluation. Findings This paper nds that DPVAE system is an available and efcient tool to support automobile collaborative assembly design. Practical implications Designers can discuss and verify the assembly scheme to realize the previous design scenario in DPVAE, so it is useful for reducing costs, improving quality and shortening the time to market, especially for new type automobile development. Originality/value A combination of distributed technology and parallel computing technology is applied in product virtual assembly, solving the problems including collaborative work of multi-user and large data real-time processing successfully, that provides a useful tool for automobile development. Keywords Design for assembly, Automotive industry, Virtual work Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
With the increase of complex component structure and rened model, it is difcult for a single manufacturer to complete the entire automobile development task. Collaborative product design based on network reects the trend for vehicle development. Usually, complex product development in a large-scale comprehensive enterprise involves with lots of departments or suppliers. It says near 50-80 percent components of a complex product are supplied from collaborative partner manufacturers geographically dispersed (Chen et al., 2004), which means complex product development process needs more and more cooperation among designers. In this case, the lack of effective real time communication will bring difculty for component model verication and overall product assembleability evaluation, and will affect the whole product quality.
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On the other hand, product models become extremely large and rene for high-quality images requirement. So a single personal computer (PC) cannot satisfy the demand of model rendering and other computing processing, especially a serious image delay occur. At present, there are mainly two methods to solve the problems above. Model simplication (Qiu et al., 2004; Li et al., 2007), which reduce the product data; supercomputer is applied, such as HP and SGI workstation (Hibbard et al., 2001; Iyer et al., 2005), which can meet the requirement, but it cannot be popularized for expensiveness. A cluster composed of a collection of independent and cheap machines, used together as a supercomputer, provide a well and economical solution (Liang et al., 2005; Xiong et al., 2007; Mori and Kanno, 2007), but few successful industrial application examples, especially for automobile design, is reported. Collaborative virtual assembly (CVA) technology, based on distributed simulation and parallel computing technologies, provides real time experimental assembly environment for
This work is supported by the Key Project from National Nature and Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 90612017) and Key Project from Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Grant No. 061111013). The authors are also grateful to the Editors and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Assembly Automation 29/3 (2009) 279 289 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0144-5154] [DOI 10.1108/01445150910972967]

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designers located at different places, by which designers at different location can exchange product data, discuss and verify the assembly scheme to realize the previous design scenario. In this paper, an internet-based system named distributed parallel virtual assembly environment (DPVAE) is introduced. In this environment, multi-designer at different location can fulll the component model verication and assembly process evaluation collaboratively for vehicle at realtime. The architecture of the system together with the key technologies is discussed in details. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, some works of the past on CVA are recalled. Section 3 gives the functional requirements of system. The review of DPVAE including architecture of the system and key technologies is given at Section 4. Section 5 gives the representative features and capabilities of DPVAE. Section 6 is a case study, and nally Section 7 ends this paper with conclusions and future work.

technology of distributed CVA is a research focus at present, however, little information of successful application is reported, especially for automobile development. As collaborative assembly design involves the synchronized operation among several simulation systems, and also because of large parts number and complex assembly structure for automobile, as results, the real time data transmission through network is very heavy, the management of multi-user collaborative information is relatively intricate, and these mean there are still a lot of technologies waiting for further research.

3. Functional requirements
Traditional collaborative design solutions for automobile mostly focus on the product data and information management during product research and development (Trappey and Hsiao, 2008). Unfortunately, such ways are time-consuming and error-prone. Assembly design and verication can be realized in computer-aided design (CAD) environment, such as CATIA, UG NX, etc. but only the nal assembly state can be checked and the assembly process is ignored, for example, collision, interference and assembly path in the process of assembly cannot be veried and simulated. General CAD software can run only supported by a single PC, the low rate of frame is unbearable, especially when operating interactively with the whole automobile. In addition, an immersing and intuitionistic stereo environment should be provided rather than a 3D interface. In contrast, we target the distributed team design scenario involving all the designer and supervisor related. By enabling geographically distributed designers to assemble their individual designs together in real time, a direct and effective way should be provided. To make this possible, a set of system requirements should be incorporated in the development as highlighted below: . Internet condition. To allow geographically dispersed designers to collaborate over the internet, the system should support the internet standards and protocols, such as TCP/IP. . Convenient data conversion. The product modeling environment for designers may be different, so data conversion for common CAD software such as CATIA, UG and PRO/E should be supported. . Real time interactive assembly operation. The designer can interactive manipulate the object such as grasp, move, constraint process, release and such actions should be reected accurately in the virtual environment. . Synchronization control. The consistence of the scene of all the system nodes should be maintained, which means when the scene of a node change because of manipulation, the information must transfer to all other nodes and update their scene synchronously. . Large data set real-time process. The automobile product often has large numbers of parts. To display the parts realistically, large data set are used to describe parts in the virtual environment. The collaborated virtual assembly environment should allow users operate the parts in realtime, so the system must has ability in large data set realtime process. . High-efcient CD or dynamic interference check. CD or dynamic interference check is the basic function of the interactive virtual reality simulation, which are used to 280

2. Related works
In order to realize distributed CVA, lots of researchers have already conducted extensive research, and signicant results have been achieved. An internet-based collaborative product assembly design tool is more early developed (Shyamsundar and Gadh, 2002). In this system, a new assembly representation scheme was introduced to improve the assembly modeling efciency. A collaborative framework that does support integrated design of parts and assemblies is also presented (Bidarra et al., 2002). In this framework, the team members can discuss the assembly design issues through a collaborative validity maintenance scheme including phone, chat channel, shared camera, etc. Lu et al. (2006) developed a collaborative assembly design environment which enabled multiple geographically dispersed designers to design and assemble parts collaboratively and synchronously through the internet. The web-based virtual technologies have been applied for automotive development process (Noh et al., 2005; Liang, 2007; Dai et al., 2006). The above researchers proposed the approaches to realize the collaboration between different designers, but the interactive modes supported by the CVA environment are not effective or intuitive ways such as chat channel, etc. And also the performance of the system especially supporting realtime assembly activity for complex product was not considered enough. In order to solve the above problem, the relative performance of different distribution strategies is discussed (Marsh et al., 2006), which support collaborative virtual reality such as client/server, peer-to-peer and several hybrid modes. They proposed a hybrid architecture which successfully supported real-time collaboration for assembly. For supporting the interactive visualization of complex dynamic virtual environments for industrial assemblies, a dynamic data model are presented integrating a spatial data set of hierarchical model representation and a dynamic transformation mechanism for runtime adaptation to the changes and movements of the assembly structures; based on model above, the complexity reduction was accomplished through view frustum culling, non-conservative occlusion culling, and geometry simplication(Wang and Li, 2006). But the collaboration mode supported by above systems is not considered. Collaboration is considered as a viable topic in distributed virtual environment (SISO, 2008) and the

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verify assembly design during virtual assembling operation. So an efcient CD method is necessary for complex products. Multi-channel stereo image output. This function is used to output the stereo image, and the virtual objects are manipulated easily. Multi-modal interaction. Users interact with VE through multiple modalities for different hardware, such as the common way keyboard and mouse like in CAD, Cyberglove and ock of bird (FOB).

4. Review of DPVAE
4.1 Solution and run condition The basic idea of DPVAE is shown in Figure 1. Geometric modeling and assembly design of products are carried out in CAD system by designer at different location. Then geometric and assembly information are transferred to DPVAE by a special data interface. All designer can work together to realize assembly analyses and assembly process planning of product collaboratively, as well as assembly operation training in the same immersive DPVAE. The system can run in the internet or local area network (LAN) condition. According to the functional requirements and the basic idea above, an implementation scheme based on high-level architecture/run-time infrastructure (HLA/RTI) protocol (IEEE Standard, 2000) and message passing interface MPI (Le and Rejeb, 2006; Message Passing Interface Forum, 2008) has been proposed as shown in Figure 2. For this scheme, there are a server node and several user client nodes, they together build up CVA federation (concept in HLA, is dened as a group of federates forming a community and federates may be simulation models). The master server is in charge of product data management and multi-user (client node) collaborative operation management. Each client node has the functions of product data management and virtual assembly simulation. According to the complexity of product model, the client node can run in a single-PC, or in a PCcluster supported by high-speed LAN (gigabit). The amount of supporting computer in a PC-cluster can be congured based on the amount of product model data. Figure 1 Basic idea of DPVAE
CAD environment at different designers

In this case, the client node is responsible for managing the supporting resource within the LAN, such as resource detection, conguration and synchronization control. The control and synchronization information between master server and client nodes is transmitted through RTI communication interface. The synchronization information and data exchange among supporting nodes is realized by MPI. This system will be launched to work according to the following steps: 1 Launch RTI service. 2 Startup master server, it will apply for registration from RTI, and then buildup a CVA federation. A CVA environment will be formed. 3 Each client node congures supporting resource parameters and run to joint the federation based on user name and IP address. 4 The master server will make judgment whether the applicant is legal or not. If no, the action will be failed. Otherwise, the client user can build and joint in the same virtual environment, and can conduct further assembly operation. This scheme based on HLA/RTI and MPI is a kind of loose-coupled synchronization approach; it combines the advantage of client/server and peer to peer modes. Under the uniform control of master server, most of the interactive assembly operation tasks can be executed at client node that can maximize the collaborative operation efciency. 4.2 Function modules DPVAE is composed of six module, CAD system interface module, master service module, client user service module, CD module, rendering service module and image process module, as shown in Figure 3. In the system, product model from CAD environment can be imported to virtual environment by CAD data interface, models used for CD can be created based on part geometric polygon model. During assembly simulation, geometric models can be parallel rendered by rendering nodes and then output to image output nodes. After nishing the assembly operation task, an evaluation report that records assembly process information

Collaborative VA design environment Collaboratively model verification Part information Assembly information Collaboratively assembly process evaluation Assembly sequence planning Assembly operation training Path information Sequence information Interference information

Internet

Modification suggestion Assembly process analyse

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Figure 2 Implementation scheme for DPVAE

H-LAN

Single-pc User client node

User client node User client node HLA/RTI (INTERNET/LAN)

H-LAN Rendering nodes

Network switches User client node

Single-pc User client node

Image process nodes

Collision detection nodes

supporting resource nodes Master sever node High speed LAN

Figure 3 System module structure of DPVAE

Synchronized control info. Collision detection control

Master service node Master organizor

Collision detection service node Result of collision calculation

User status Rendering control, info. rendered object info. Assembly operation info. User service node Client user Rendering service node CAD Product interface information Image control info. CAD user Rendering results Image output

The system composed of a user client node, several rendering nodes and image processing nodes, which connect with high-speed LAN. The number of supporting nodes is congured by user according to the performance of PC and the rendering task. The architecture of parallel rendering is shown in Figure 4(a). With several image process nodes, multi-channel stereo (active and passive) can be realized. As shown in Figure 4(b) is two-channel car image from four rendering nodes. 4.3.2 Scene uniformity during co-operating In DPVAE, product assembly structure is described with assembly hierarchy tree. Assembly, part and constraint are the primary object types, as shown in Figure 5. Assembly is composed of sub-assemblies and parts, and sub-assembly is composed of parts. Constraint is used to describe the mating relation between two parts. Each object type have collaborative attributes which are used to express the object state, such as CompletFlag of assembly represents whether an assembly is completed or not (when complete ag is set to true, means assembly completed, vice versa); Position of part means the coordinate location and orientation of an object; Conrmed_Flag of constraint means whether the constraint is conrmed or not (when the ag is equal to true, means the constraint is conrmed, vice versa). If collaborative attributes of all the objects of each node is uniform, the scene of each node must be uniform. To keep collaborative attributes uniform among all the nodes, the mechanism of event synchronization based on attributes ownership is applied. The basic idea of which is that node those owns the ownership of an object is responsible to update the collaborative attributes and broadcast to all others. That means user who want to manipulate an object must get its ownership rst. In DPVAE, the ownerships of all the objects are owned by the master at initialization. The ownership control scheme is provided by HLA/RTI, which can ensure only one node owns the attributes ownership at the same time. 282

Image service node

is created automatically. With these modules DPVAE can be used to achieve assembly design and component model verication of automobile collaboratively. 4.3 Key technologies 4.3.1 Parallel rendering based on PC-cluster The goal of parallel rendering is to realize real-time rendering of large-scale scene and multi-channel stereo output. An improved sort-rst parallel rendering scheme is used, the basic idea of which is that polygon models are segmented into smaller ones before rendering process is started. After rendering process has been launched, load-balance algorithm based on dynamic-frustum-division is used, so as to assign smaller models to different rendering node according to each rendering nodes capability. And then rendering nodes transmit result (images) to corresponding image processing nodes, where images are merged and adjusted to form the last images. After some necessary further processing such as geometry rectication and so on, the images will be output to display system.

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Assembly Automation Volume 29 Number 3 2009 279 289

Figure 4 Parallel rendering architecture and multi-channel implementation: (a) architecture of parallel rendering; (b) two-channel image from two rendering nodes
Image segment-1 Model segmentation Load-balance Scenes update Image processing Rendering node node-1 Image Scene segment segment-0 Scene update User node Rendering node-2 Image processing Image segment-n node Rendering node-n (a) (b)

Figure 5 Assembly hierarchy tree

Product/Assembly

11,699 bounding boxes, and the time consumed for the whole generation is 1.125 s. 4.3.4 Interactive operation with tactile feedback DPVAE allows users to interact with the virtual environment through multiple modes such as common input/output (I/O) device mouse/keyboard and several kinds of data glove. Assembly operation by the data glove with tactile feedback is an intuitional interaction mode. A calculation method of feedback force is proposed, and also the mechanism model of hand is created, which is used to manipulate model combined with real hand. User can manipulate model like in the real world, the feedback force will occur at the position of the centre of the palm and the ngers. In DPVAE, user can operate by virtual hands or by virtual tools, as shown in Figure 7.

Part-0

Sub assembly

Sub assembly

Constranint-01

Part-1 Constranint-12

Part-2

4.3.3 Real-time collision detection CD, as a basic function of interactive virtual reality simulation (Xiao et al., 2007), can be used in interactive virtual assembly simulation, such as dynamic intersection detection between parts and subassemblies, etc. Although there are open source CD library and methods available (Kim and Vance, 2004; Akgunduz et al., 2005), it cannot satisfy with high levels of demands because there are large amount of components for an automobile and the model structure is relatively intricate. Therefore, a set of algorithms of rapid CD have been proposed independently. According to the algorithms, a bounding volumes with different level of detail (BV-LOD) model is generated based on the original geometry polygon model of a geometric object, and then the BV-LOD models are used for rapid CD calculating. With the result, the farther interference check based on polygon models can be carried out. A package has been developed that was used for supporting the CD during assembling in DPVAE. It has been proved the algorithms high efcient which can satisfy the demand of real-time CD in the complex virtual scene. This method can be integrated in the system or used as a single supporting node, which has already implemented in DPVAE. Figure 6 shows a sample of the generation from component polygon model to collision models with different required precision. The sixth level collision model consists of 283

5. Representative features and capabilities

5.1 Data interface to CAD system Product component models are mostly created in CAD environment, such as CATIA, UG, and PRO/engineering, etc. Most CVA systems provide a common interface to get part and assembly information from CAD software. While it is not sufcient for automobile: rst, there are a great number of models, and it is a waste time doing assembly of all automobile; second, all the parts and components need not being evaluated for the users, and some components that are conrmed no problem should be converted into DPVAE with assembly status. That means the attributes Complete_Flag of assembly is true at system beginning. CAD data interfaces to CATIA, UG, and PRO/engineering are developed for the problem above. The interfaces are integrated into the corresponding CAD system. All CAD environments provide an assembly hierarchy tree, on which the designer can appoint a component as an assembly. The interface can output all of the information including assembly hierarchy tree, parts, assembling constraints. 5.2 Users and authorities management Sensitive information protection, such as appearance shape information and important geometric characteristics information, is an important problem in collaborative

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Figure 6 Different precision level of BV-LOD models generated from polygon model

(a)

(b)

(c) Notes: (a) First level; (b) second level; (c) third level; (d) sixth level

(d)

assembly process because the cooperation involves multiusers from different departments including component designer and supplier. Few geometric characteristics are imported from CAD software to guide the users to assembly precisely, but these characteristics cannot be parsed by user. All the users cannot get the whole product information because of different roles with different authorities. It is an agreement in DPVAE that only the user who owns the authority of a model can manipulate it, and the characteristics information mentioned above will be shown when being manipulated. The roles are dened and controlled by the master server node according to assembly task, such as car body designer, chassis designer, supplier and spectator. Each user must register to the system and applies a proper role rst. A product model can be transformed into several continuous multi-resolution models, users load different 284

models into virtual environment according to their roles. As shown in Figure 8 is original automobile defender model and two simplied models with few appearance shape features reserved. For example, a seat supplier can only own the second simplied models of defender. With measures above, sensitive information can be protected effectively. 5.3 Management of nodes for parallel computing in client side The requirement for supporting resource node is different because of their different computing capability. DPVAE system provide a function interface, by which user can congure supporting resource node freely by themselves. When a user client node starts, the system searches and lists the computing resource nodes and their working status automatically in LAN. User can congure nodes according to simulation needs, such as rendering node, image processing

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Figure 7 Interactive assembling operations in DPVAE

(a)

(b)

(c) (d) Notes: (a) Grasp a part; (b) assembling with a tool; (c) assembling with two hands; (d) assembling a car with cyber/touch data glove

node and CD node. Each supporting node loads product model automatically and provides service for client node through high-speed LAN. In this parallel mode, massive data processing and high-resolution real-time immersive stereoscopic display can be realized. 5.4 Co-operating in virtual assembly environment If a user client wants to pick up an object, it sends a request to master applying the ownership and waits for feedback. After receiving the request, the master will make judgment whether the ownership exists or not and whether the applicant is a valid user or not. If the answer is yes, it returns the positive information, vice versa. If several users apply the same object ownership, only one user gets it successfully. After successful grasped, object is xed and can be moved with virtual hand. When the object is moved near to the accurate position, a marker appears (location label of the object), and user can make a gesture to conrm the precise mating location. User sends a command to release the object and all related ownerships will be return to master. All the nodes operate with an independent viewpoint. In addition, DPVAE provide a text communication, with which users can send real-time message to others and discuss the issues during co-operating. 285

5.5 Aided evaluation and analysis tool To evaluate the assembly operation effectively, several methods are provided, such as assembly path record and replay, trajectory display and aided evaluation report. In virtual environment, assembly sequence and path of parts with data glove is freely and arbitrary, there must be an optimal one. Record and replay of moving sequence and path can be used to optimize the assemble process. Trajectory display is used as an intuitionistic way to show the moving path of component. An evaluation report will be created automatically when nishing an assembly task. The information of report is divided into three parts. The rst is general statistic information of whole assembly task. The second is status information of all the parts. The last one is interference information, which shows the interference of parts in the assembly process. Each piece of interference information includes serial number, related parts and their ID, importance and an interference image (snapshot). If the user considers interference is caused possibly by designer of part, he can make a special gesture to conrm and the parameter importance become Yes. If the interference is caused by wrong assembly sequence or incorrect operation, the importance is No. This report is an important design reference especially for product modication.

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Figure 8 Original automobile defender model and two simplied models

(a)

(b)

(c) Notes: (a) Original model; (b) simplified model-1; (c) simplified model-2

6. Case studies
6.1 RA-750 car assembly evaluation during design stage RA-750 is a new car and composed of 86 components, 396 parts (main component excluding connecting piece, such as screw). All the parts have been modeled, which has 6.93 million facets altogether. The static interference checking of nal assembly state of each component has been carried out in CATIA environment. It is difcult for designers to perform assembly evaluation task of whole car because of long-time cost and low-frame rate (about 2 , 6 frames/s). The assembly process evaluation of whole car would be performed in DPVAE. In this case, the evaluation involve designers form departments of car body, chassis, inner ornament and a seat supplier, working at client nodes. Each client node congures: four PCs as rendering nodes, two PCs as image nodes and one PC as collision nodes, and each PC equips with Pentium IV 1.86 GHz, 2.0 GB of RAM, the connection between client node and supporting node is 1,000 M LAN. The detailed process using DPVAE for this assembly evaluation is shown as follows. 6.1.1 Product data transform from CATIA to DPVAE The process of the data transform can be divided into three steps: rst, get car assembly information from CATIA by the interface, which is developed with the rapid application development environment and component application architecture/ application program interface. Second, transform the CAD model to polygon model and collision model, the former is used 286

to display in virtual environment and the latter is used to be perceived and manipulated, the polygon model can be simplied as mentioned in Section 5.2. Finally, put the polygon models and collision models into a given folder, and then write the saved folder path together with the car assembly information into a simulation le (.xml as given format), all the user can load the models and the le easily by internet. The segment of RA-750 simulation le as shown is Figure 9. 6.1.2 Create collaborative virtual environment A product manager is the supervisor and coordinator of the whole co-operating project, working at the master server node. The role and authority are dened according to their department. Then, the manager starts up the mater server node with a given project name RA750. Figure 10 shows the interface of virtual environment at server node. The master server node can monitor all users status in real-time with user status dialog and exchange information with users by sending text message. Designers register the system and apply a role rst. The client node should be congured supporting resource nodes manually at rst. Client node VR-ZHEN is in charge of car body design with two-channel stereo mode. Open the interface and select Resource monitoring, the resource nodes will be listed at the dialogue, as shown in Figure 11. Browse the status of these nodes, select the idle node (the utilization ratio of CPU is lower than 40 percent) and add them as rendering service node (VR-R1, VR-R2, VR-R3, and VR-R4), image service node (XZX and VR-HY) and CD

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Figure 9 Segment of RA-750 simulation le

Figure 11 Resource monitoring for parallel rendering client node

Figure 12 Designer for car body (two-channel stereo)

Figure 10 Virtual environment at mater node

Figure 13 Virtual environment at designer for steering wheel

service node (VR-GF). All the congure information is saved in a le and then the system can be startup with RUN, and the result of VR-ZHEN is shown in Figure 12. Client node VR-YANG is a designer for steering wheel with one-channel mode. The result is shown in Figure 13. Client node VR-ZHM is a supplier for seat with one-channel mode, and the model at this node is simplied ones except seat and related parts, the result of it is shown as in Figure14. 6.1.3 Co-operating assemble the car in virtual environment Under the cooperative control by the master node, users manipulate the component according their authorities. From the components of chassis, car body to the doors and seats, the sequence should be kept as in real world, or repeated work (disassembly and reassembly) may occur. When a component 287

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Figure 14 Supplier of seats operating with keyboard and mouse

Design evaluation report generated at each node when nishing the assembly task. The segment of this kind of report at a chassis designer is shown as Figure 15(b). There are 16 interference occurred. The image shows the interference between front seat and hand brake. The hand brake would interfere the front seat when adjust the seat position and it will be modied later in CATIA environment and re-veried in DPVAE. All the interferences will be eliminated at last. 6.2 Discussion DPVAE provides a real-time and immersive virtual assembly environment, and all the participants can effectively collaborate when performing assembly evaluation. In this case, the update frame rate of virtual scene is 15 frames/s for stereo display mode (30 frames/s for non-stereo mode) as shown in Figure 12. It is sufcient for designers to do assembly evaluation of whole car. Each designer from different department evaluates assembly process with their own professional knowledge, so the problems such as interference can be found and solved conveniently and rapidly. Evaluation report records the most of the problems during assembly process, and it can help designer nding the root of the problem. In this case, there are 16 interferences which cannot be checked by the general CAD environment easily. Also the optimized assembly path and sequence could be obtained visually with this system.

is being nished, its state will reect at assembly tree dialog immedia tely with the checked box (as shown in Figure 13). A users operation can be displayed intuitively in other user nodes and server node synchronously. According to the problem during the assembly process, all the participants can communicate timely with each other by text message. Each participant selects suitable interactive modes. Client node VR-ZHEN operates with cyber/touch data gloves and FOB as shown in Figure 12, VR-YANG with 5DT data gloves and FOB, VR-ZHM with the common I/O devices keyboard and mouse as shown in Figure 14. The task can be achieved quickly and effectively because of the collaboration of all the users. 6.1.4 Aided evaluation and analysis operation Open the assembly path management menu, select path record, the system would record the assembly process including assembly sequence and moving path. Replay the path and trajectory display would be used to get the best path. As shown in Figure 15(a) is the trajectory of moving a spring. Figure 15 Aided evaluation operation tool for RA-750 in DPVAE

7. Conclusions
This paper presents the technologies based on the combination of distributed technology and parallel computing technology, with which to construct an intuitionistic and effective assembly evaluation environment. The virtual scene is kept uent enough based on PC-cluster parallel computing. This cluster can be composed of general or idle PCs in the enterprise. In the assembly environment, multi-designer at different locations can efciently collaborate to perform an automobile assembly simulation task for interference check during assembling process, operating space analysis and assembling sequence planning. The function modules, key technologies, representative feature and

(a) Notes: (a) Trajectory display of a component; (b) segment of evaluation report

(b)

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capabilities are discussed in detail. To verify the validity and efciency of this environment, a case study of RA-750 car collaborative assembly design evaluation is provided. The result shows that DPVAE is a useful computer-aided tool for automobile assembly design and evaluation. However, DPVAE has still some disadvantages in application. It is inconvenient for an automobile designer to congure the supporting resource nodes manually that needs additional professional knowledge. In the future, the strategy that CVA operation supported by the GRID technology will be focused on and some key technologies are being studied. In the new strategy, the GRID takes all the computing work (rendering, image processing, CD, etc.) supported by the resource on the network. The process of resource monitoring and conguration is completed automatically by the Grid. Users do interactive assembly operation in virtual environment by a simple interface.

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Corresponding author
Wu Dianliang can be contacted at: dianliangwu@gmail.com

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