Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Faculty of sciences MASTER THESIS Milan Slančík Advanced floor plan designer in Flex Department of computer science Supervisor: Prof dr Anton Æliëns Second reader: Dr Evert Wattel Study program: Informatics, Multimedia Computer Science Acknowledgements First of all, I wish to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor, Prof Dr Anton Æliëns, for his thoughtful guidance, his valuable suggestions, comments during discussions, prompt response to my emails and speedy feedback. My gratitude also goes to my second reader, Dr Evert Wattel for his ideas, willingness to read drafts and test the application in advance. Last, but not least, I would like to give my sincere thanks also to my parents, who have supported me throughout the writing process. Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................................................ 8 1.2 STRUCTURE OF THIS DOCUMENT ............................................................................................................................ 8 2 AIM OF THE WORK AND RESEARCH ISS UES ........................................................................................... 9 3 RELATED WORK.................................................................................................................................................... 11 3.1 SIMILAR SOFTWARE ................................................................................................................................................ 11 3.1.1 Sweet home 3D ............................................................................................................................................. 11 3.1.2 FloorPlan 3D ................................................................................................................................................ 11 3.1.3 IKEA Planner................................................................................................................................................ 11 3.1.4 Google SketchUp.......................................................................................................................................... 11 3.1.5 ArchiCAD ...................................................................................................................................................... 11 3.1.6 SceneCaster................................................................................................................................................... 12 3.2 FLOORPLANNER ....................................................................................................................................................... 13 3.3 DRAGONFLY............................................................................................................................................................. 14 4 TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW .............................................................................................................................. 16 4.1 XML TECHNOLOGIES ............................................................................................................................................. 16 4.1.1 XML ................................................................................................................................................................ 16 4.1.2 XSL.................................................................................................................................................................. 16 4.1.3 XSLT ............................................................................................................................................................... 16 4.2 ADOBE TECHNOLOGIES .......................................................................................................................................... 17 4.2.1 Flash, the authoring environment ............................................................................................................. 17 4.2.2 ActionScript................................................................................................................................................... 17 4.2.3 Adobe Flex..................................................................................................................................................... 18 4.2.4 Adobe Flash Player ..................................................................................................................................... 18 4.3 VIRTUAL REALITY ................................................................................................................................................... 19 4.3.1 VRML ............................................................................................................................................................. 19 4.3.2 3D anywhere ................................................................................................................................................. 19 4.3.3 X3D browser ................................................................................................................................................. 21 4.4 ASP.NET.................................................................................................................................................................. 21 4.5 DESIGN PATTERNS ................................................................................................................................................... 21 5 ARCHITECTURE AND DES IGN........................................................................................................................ 22 5.1 OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................................................ 22 5.2 SYSTEM PROPERTIES ............................................................................................................................................... 23 5.3 USER INTERFACE ..................................................................................................................................................... 24 6 REALIZATION AND IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................................... 25 6.1 FUNDAMENTAL CLASSES ........................................................................................................................................ 25 6.1.1 Ancestry classes............................................................................................................................................ 25 6.1.2 The application class skeleton ................................................................................................................... 26 6.1.3 Furniture base classes................................................................................................................................. 27 6.1.4 Walls ............................................................................................................................................................... 29 6.1.5 Glo class ........................................................................................................................................................ 29 6.2 DEPTH MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................................................................. 29 6.2.1 Depth levels ................................................................................................................................................... 31 6.2.2 Depth levels in Wall-edit mode .................................................................................................................. 32 6.3 OBJECT DESCRIPTIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 33 6.4 3D GENERATION ...................................................................................................................................................... 35 6.4.1 Server side transformation ......................................................................................................................... 35 6.4.2 The generated 3D scene .............................................................................................................................. 35 6.4.3 Walls, floors and tiles .................................................................................................................................. 36 6.4.4 Web traffic reduction ................................................................................................................................... 36 6.5 CODE CULTURE ........................................................................................................................................................ 37 2 6.6 APPLICATION CUSTOMIZABILITY .......................................................................................................................... 37 7 SCENARIO-BAS ED USER GUIDANCE ........................................................................................................... 38 7.1 “NORMAL” USER.....................................................................................................................................................