A multichannel visualization module for virtual manufacturing

This manuscript titled " A multichannel visualization module for virtual manufacturing " has not been published already, nor is it under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere. Abstract Immersive virtual reality (VR) for manufacturing planning helps reduce product development time periods and improves the quality of the production. However, immersive VR equipment is generally expensive, both in terms of development and purchase. Users must also spend time to manually repair complex 3D shapes due to imperfect translations between the 3D engineering CAD models and the proprietary format of the VR system. In this paper, the proposed VR module uses a commercial virtual manufacturing system (VMS) as the viewer of an immersive VR system where a cluster of PCs adopts a modified simulation algorithm. The proposed module removes the data translation process and ensures good coherence among visual channels. For the experiments, the proposed module has been interfaced with the Delmia VMS. The clustering modules can reduce the cost of VR experiments while offering good performance.