Product Synthesis & Knowledgeware

Simulation Concepts

• Animated object
• State
• Sample
• Channel
• Replay

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Animated object

An animated object have one (or more) of its properties (generally physical) evolving over time. A rolling ball is an example of an animated object : the evolving property is the position.

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State

A state is the association of a given value to a property. A state of the ball is the association of a given position, table's corner, (matrix) to the position of the ball (i.e. BallPosition=table's corner).

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Sample

A sample is the assignment of a state at a given time. A sample is BallPosition=table's corner at 8AM.

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Channel

A channel is always associated to an animated object and reports the evolution of one of it's properties over time. It is a sequence of samples. Depending on the property, there are different kind of channels:

• A scalar observer channel reports the evolution of one scalar over time. Each sample contains the value of the scalar at a given time.
• A product move channel reports the evolution of the position of a component (one node of the product tree) over time. Each sample contains the position at a given time.
  For instance, a product move channel is the assignment of 'table's corner' position to 'Ball Position' at time 8AM, 'in the air' position at 8:01AM and 'on the floor' position at 8:10AM.
• A camera move channel reports the evolution of the position and zoom factors of a camera over time. Each sample contains the position and zoom factors at a given time.

One can define many channels on the same object but they must refer different properties.

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Replay

A replay describes the complete animation of a set of animated objects within an interval. It enables the end-user to play a simulation which was recorded before.

It is made of several channels : each channel describes the evolution of the property of one object of the scene over time.
An example of replay is assignment of position P0 to BallPosition at time T0, P1 at T1, P2 at T2 and the assignment of intensity I0 to LightIntensity at time T0 and I3 at T3.

A CATProduct document can contain many replays.

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In Short

A CATProduct document may contains several replays. Each of these replays may gather several channels. Each of these channel reports the evolution of a property over time. The state of this property is contained in a sample.

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History

Copyright © 2000, Dassault Systèmes. All rights reserved.