Assistant

Synopsis

Demonstration project showing the use of AVS in a variety of application areas.

Description

The Assistant project is a demonstration application that shows how AVS/Express may be used in a number of different application areas. The application areas available are:
Each of these areas has a set of sample data available and the user can choose from a number of ways of visualising each piece of data. The options available are appropriate for each application area. The user can also choose to read in their own data. All the standard properties are available for editing. These include setting the camera, scene and object rendering properties.

Installation

Due to the way the Assistant project works the directory it is located in has to be specified. This is done by editing the a_start.v file. Open this file using a standard text editior such as MSDOS Edit, vi or emacs and find the line: 
$setenv ASSIST_HOME c:/assist
Alter this line so that it points to the location of Assistant directory on your system. For example if the Assistant project was installed by fred on a Unix system in his home directory then the Assistant directory might be /usr/people/fred/assist. Therefore he would edit the a_start.v to read: 
$setenv ASSIST_HOME /usr/people/fred/assist

Starting the Assistant

To start the Assistant load the application file a_start.v using any of the standard methods. The easiest way to do this is to choose the menu option File->Load Application... and browse for the a_start.v file from there. The application can also be loaded from the AVS startup dialog box or from the command line.

Using the Assistant

The Assistant will start with the main menu shown below:
Main Menu
Each of six pictures selects a different application area. A text description of each can be seen by resting the mouse pointer over each picture. Selecting one of the options brings a sub-menu similar to that shown below:
Sub-menu
It also brings up a larger window. This is the scene viewer and will display the results of your visualisations. The sub-menu window can be broken up into two sections, a toolbar at the top of the window and a number of option panels. Clicking on a picture in an option panel enables the visualisation that it represents. The visualisation selected will appear in the scene viewer and parameters will appear in the right-hand panel. These parameters can be edited in place or the button below the picture can be used to enlarge the parameters panel. Click the RETURN button to return to the sub-menu. These options are shown in the picture below:
Option panel
The toolbar options are shown below. The two rightmost buttons perform the same functions as in AVS/Express and can be used to reset any rotations of the scene that you may have made.
Toolbar

Technical Details

The demonstration application is entirely written in V code. It creates and destorys user interface components as required by dynamically instancing and deinstancing objects. This technique has many uses when developing applications with AVS/Express and it can be learnt by studying out the Assistant project works. It particular the dynamic creation and destruction of objects can be seen if the Network Editor is examined.

Authors

Dr. Johannes Widyanatta
Advanced Visual Systems GmbH

Modifications

Andrew Dodd

Contact

International AVS Centre
Manchester Visualization Centre
Manchester Computing
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
United Kingdom
M13 9PL