INTEGRATION OF VISUALIZATION, ANIMATION AND GIS INTO AN ENGINEERING CURRICULUM

Dr. Howard Turner P.L.S Dr. Francelina Neto P.L.S

William Raymond Jr. P.L.S. P.E.

Department of Civil Engineering California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

3801 W Temple Avenue Pomona, CA 91768

ABSTRACT

This paper will focus on the development of engineering curriculum at Cal Poly Pomona. It will discuss the challenges of integrating visualization, animation and GIS into freshman surveying classes to expose 800 civil engineering students to principles of visualization, animation and GIS. INTRODUCTION

Many civil engineering students encounter difficulties in understanding fundamental three-dimensional concepts that are used in subjects such as statics, dynamics and applied theoretical mechanics. These subjects form the basis and understanding of many upper division studies. Most civil engineering departments now include the teaching of computer graphics in their freshman curricula. However, the focus is on two-dimensional graphics, which does not improve a student’s understanding of three-dimensional space. Literature shows that 3-D graphical representations of difficult fundamental concepts improves student learning. Turner 2003 described implementing visualization and animation in the classroom. This paper extends these concepts to include geographical information systems.

In a series of experiments between 1991 and 1994, Mayer et al. demonstrated that illustrations (both static and animated) could have a dramatic positive effect on learning under certain conditions. Results from the early experiments, using only static illustrations, showed that students who viewed labeled illustrations showed better explanative recall and problem-solving transfer than students who saw only labels or illustrations or neither (Mayer, 1989). Mayer claims that the labeled illustrations played two roles: guiding students' attention and helping them build internal connections.

In another set of experiments, the use of animation was considered to help students understand scientific explanations (Mayer and Anderson, 1991 and 1992). In the experiments, college students with limited mechanical knowledge viewed animations and/or listened to narrations explaining the operation of a bicycle pump and a hydraulic brake. Students who saw an animation and listened to an explanatory narration outperformed those who did not see the animation on a creative, problem-solving test. In a later experiment, this result was narrowed to show that the benefit of animation occurred when it was viewed concurrently with hearing an explanation, not when the two occur contiguously (Mayer and Sims, 1994).

Kehoe et al. (1999) demonstrated a significant difference between students who learn algorithms with animation and those who learned without animation. The experiment consisted in testing students in two groups, one with, and another without animation. The animation group performed better at the end of testing. Two students from the animation group had perfect scores. Kehoe concluded first that the pedagogical value of animation would be more apparent in an open interactive learning situation such as a laboratory or a homework exercise. Secondly, that animation promotes motivation, and finally that animation worked best in procedural operations. Koller et al. (1995), working in the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center at Georgia Institute of Technology, developed the Virtual GIS system. In the following years, research was conducted in applying visualization and animation concepts into GIS (Lindstrom et al., 1997; Davis et al., 1998; Wartell et al., 1999). The original system used static visualization. As computers became more

powerful real-time visualization was developed. The VGIS placed a high priority on real-time highly interactive 3-D visualization of spatial data.

Based on this research, a project was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2001 to introduce real-time three-dimensional visualization and animation concepts into the engineering curriculum to improve student learning and cognition of fundamental geospatial engineering concepts.

The initial objective was to introduce real-time visualization and animation into the curriculum of upper division courses. A second objective was to use material and demonstrations developed in upper division classes in conjunction with a simple easy to use visualization tool in lower division classes. The final objective was to have visualization, animation and GIS concepts integrated throughout the curriculum, so students would learn the basic concepts in freshman and sophomore years, apply these concepts to statics and dynamics in their sophomore and junior years, learn to develop intelligent plans, and use these concepts with more sophisticated software in their senior year. THE CIVIL AND SURVEYING ENGINEERING PROGRAM AT CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY POMONA

California State Polytechnic University Pomona is one of the 23 campuses in The California State University and is known locally in California as Cal Poly Pomona. The institution has a special mission to educate future leaders of a technological society. Of the approximate 20,000 students on campus, 19% are enrolled in the College of Engineering. The Civil Engineering Department has grown from a modest beginning in 1964 to almost 700 students today. Approximately 33% of the enrolled students are women, underrepresented minorities, or disabled students. The Civil Engineering Department offers three option programs that lead to specialized studies in the areas of general civil, environmental, and surveying engineering.

At Cal Poly Pomona, an integral part of civil engineering undergraduate education has been the teaching of surveying engineering. Elementary Surveying is required for all three options in civil engineering, and Advanced Surveying is required for students in the general and surveying options. All civil engineering students must take CAD Engine Concepts and Computers in Civil Engineering. Two other courses, Photogrammetry and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), are taught in the surveying engineering curriculum and are taken as technical electives by some general and environmental option students.

Geographical information systems and visualization are becoming an integral part of civil engineering practice. A review of 50 departments of Civil Engineering web sites found several universities with GIS in their curricula, but none teaching visualization concepts. Civil and surveying engineering have always been integrated in the United States, and it is a logical expansion of curricula in both disciplines to include visualization. The Civil Engineering Department at Cal Poly Pomona has taught photogrammetry for 20 years and GIS for 15 years. Cal Poly Pomona is the only university in southern California that offers programs in the disciplines of civil engineering, surveying engineering, and GIS.

Institutional support for equipment in the development of courses in visualization and other related topics in the civil engineering curriculum is limited. Graduates from the Department of Civil Engineering are prepared to become professional engineers and land surveyors. An amendment to the registration acts for civil engineers and land surveyors in 1990 made the electronic transfer of data related to civil engineering and land surveying part of engineering and surveying practice. Many employers of Cal Poly Pomona graduates in civil engineering, in both the public and private sectors, frequently request curriculum improvements to reflect visualization practices and the role they can play in civil engineering. Firms and agencies indicate the need for civil engineers, trained in GIS and engineering visualization, to sustain the development of industry and government agencies in southern California. It is now common civil engineering practice to develop animated movies of completed projects. Many firms are now modeling concepts prior to bidding on proposals to show their capabilities.

EQUIPMENT AND SOFTWARE ACQUISITION

The initial goal was to educate upper-division civil engineering students in the theory and practical aspects of data capture, visualization and animation relevant to civil engineering practice. Concurrently, simple visualization tools were introduced into freshman and sophomore classes.

During the first year of the project, external funding provided 30 Dell 530 Workstations with Dual Intel Xeon 1.8GHz. processors with 1GB memory and 3D Labs 5110 video card, 3COM 10 / 100 Network Ethernet card, 19” Color Multi-Sync Monitor, Stereographics EZ Emitters, ITAK Mouse-Trak Trackballs, and Stereo Eye Glasses. This allowed a complete revamping and redesigning of the Geospatial Information Systems laboratory where most of the visualization courses take place.

Diverse visualization and animation software was donated to complement the state of the art hardware. Bentley Systems Inc. donated three packages for this purpose as a matching grant to DOD funding. Bentley Enterprise Navigator provides features for visualizing and querying both graphical and non-graphical information from many industry-standard applications. Bentley Schedule Simulator lets users “virtually” build a facility according to a construction schedule. Modifications to the schedule can be easily reflected in the simulation, and users can also choose to play multiple scenarios, such as early vs. late start or actual vs. planned progress. Bentley Dynamic Animator takes static models generated in the design phase of a project and applies accurate motion to the 3D objects. Animations can easily be recorded, replayed, and modified as required, and can be output to video files for presentation or training purposes. In addition, multi-million dollars software donations were obtained from BAESystems, Z/I Imaging, Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions. Trimble Navigation donated hardware and software to support the laboratory. The University acquires ESRI and ERDAS products through CSU system agreements. The Geospatial Information Systems laboratory is equipped to complete GPS data acquisition processing, total station data acquisition processing, and softcopy photogrammetric data acquisition processing. It is also equipped to perform GIS analysis, Remote Sensing analysis, visualization and animation scene development. CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

An important part of the project was the integration of technology, namely visualization, animation and GIS into the curriculum. It was initially proposed to educate upper-division civil engineering students in the theory and practical aspects of data capture, visualization and animation relevant to civil engineering practice. Concurrently, simple visualization tools would be introduced into freshman and sophomore classes. To accomplish this, the photogrammetry and GIS classes were the first to begin the upper division implementation. When this was tried, it was discovered that students were lacking training in fundamental concepts of 3D modeling and visualization. Even though students completed the 3D exercises in photogrammetry and GIS easily, they had difficulty extending to rendering and visualization. It was determined that students had difficulty in distinguishing between solids and surfaces, and had little or no knowledge of the difference.

Simultaneously, the curriculum of the freshmen course on CAD and Engine concepts was modified to accommodate 3D design with Rhino-3D, a simple 3-D NURBS modeling tool. Rhino was introduced as a continuation of CAD design using MicroStation. Students were given basic instruction on the use of Rhino using the three tutorials that come with the software. Students then completed a more elaborated project to further enhance their visualization skills, drew a staircase, and learned how to render and choose viewpoints for project visualization.

In spring quarter 2002, a trial course was developed to examine the problems encountered by introducing visualization and animation into a civil engineering curriculum. It was decided to combine

data collection with visualization, and initially avoid animation. Eighteen students enrolled in this class. An alumnus of the civil engineering program owns “The Prizm Group,” a Geospatial engineering company. The Prizm Group owns a Cyrax Scanner. This scanner was used to scan the exterior of the engineering building. Students modeled the exterior of the building using Cyrax software that was loaned to the university. Modeling requires complex graphic elements, which are connected. Data collected by students was frequently below the required quality because they were learning the data collection process at the same time. Results showed that students would learn visualization and animation concepts better if the data they were working with was of better quality.

A second trial class was offered in the fall quarter 2002. Twelve students enrolled in this class. Students spent the first 6 weeks learning 3D modeling, visualization and animation techniques with Bentley software. In the remaining weeks, they were given a project of modeling a walk-through or fly-through of the Saugus treatment plant of the Los Angeles County Sanitation District. This time the data was collected by professionals and was of good quality. The images below are screen shots of the walk-through.

Plate 1

The course was very successful. Knowledge gained from these trial courses was used to develop a new course on Digital Mapping.

The new course, CE 420 Digital Mapping, was offered in the fall quarter 2003. In the prior two trial classes, one was devoted to laser scanning modeling and one was devoted to 3D modeling and animation. In this class, the two concepts were combined. Eighteen students enrolled in this class. An alumnus of the civil engineering program owns “The Prizm Group,” a Geospatial engineering company. The Prizm Group owns a Cyrax Scanner. This scanner was used to scan a piping network behind the engineering building. Students modeled the piping complex using Cyrax software exported the wire frame to MicroStation, and created walk-through or fly-through animation models. The results are shown below.

Plate 2

All civil engineering students have to complete CE 127 CAD Engine Concepts. Students learn 2-D MicroStation in this class. In the last two years, the class has been modified to include Rhino-3D, a simple 3-D NURBS modeling tool. Rhino was used in this course for the first time in December 2001. Nine (9) hours were allocated for 3D design with Rhino. Rhino was introduced as a continuation of CAD design using MicroStation. Students were given basic instruction on the use of Rhino using the three tutorials that come with the software. Students then completed a more elaborated project to further enhance their visualization skills. This consisted of the drawing of a staircase using a tutorial that is available at http://www.geocities.com/rhino3dtutorials/SpiralStairCase/. The final staircase is shown in Plates 3 to 5.

Plate 3

Plate 4

Plate 5

Rhino proved to be a very easy tool to teach 3D design, rendering and visualization in a short period of time to students that were dealing with 3D design for the first time.

Based on the success of the animation project, a decision was made to ensure that all civil engineering students had, not only knowledge of visualization and animation, but also had GIS knowledge, and the knowledge to apply visualization and animation in a GIS environment. All civil engineering students have to complete CE134 Elementary Surveying. It was the ideal place to introduce civil engineering student to GIS. It was also decided to assign each student group to a different part of campus to collect data. These data could then be used in developing a campus GIS. The ground control for the exercises was developed in CE311 Geodesy in the winter quarter 2004. In CE134 Elementary Surveying, students complete a topographic map as part of a project. To teach student GIS, the laboratory was extended to teach students to link graphical topographic features with

rows in a database using the ODBC interface in microstation. In the summer of 2003, during summer school, two sections of CE134 were able to complete the exercise successfully. In the spring quarter 2004, three sections of 134 (approximately 75 students), completed a project exercise in GIS. Plate 3 shows a submitted project from the spring quarter.

Plate 3

The goal is to graduate student who understand the concepts of visualization, animation and GIS. In addition students will understand photogrammetry supported GIS, and be able to apply visualization and animation in a GIS and WebGIS environment as shown in Plate 4.

Plate 4

Note: The video playing does not show on a screen shot CONCLUSION

The grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation, together with the donations and matching funds received from several sources, allowed for the creation of a state of the art Geospatial engineering laboratory facility. Several courses in the Civil Engineering program were modified to integrate visualization, animation and concepts in the curriculum.

During the first year, it was discovered that although students completed the 3D exercises in photogrammetry and GIS easily, they had difficulty extending to rendering and visualization. It was determined that students had difficulty in distinguishing between solids and surfaces, and had little or no knowledge of the difference. Students in lower level courses showed no major difficulty in learning 3D visualization concepts. These students did not reach upper division status and their performance in upper division courses cannot be evaluated at this time yet. However, it is predicted that as the project grows, and students become knowledgeable in these techniques, they will include them in senior projects, comprehensive design projects, and the workplace when they graduate.

In the second year, visualization and animation were extended into the GIS environment. GIS was introduced into a freshman class. Civil Engineering student scores in statics and dynamics appear to be improving but ore data is required to prove the hypothesis.

The goal is to graduate student who understand the concepts of visualization, animation and GIS. In addition students will understand photogrammetry supported GIS, and be able to apply visualization and animation in a GIS and WebGIS environment.

REFERENCES

H. Turner and F.A. Neto (2003). “Geo-Spatial Concepts in Visualization and Animation Curriculum Development” Proceedings of American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 2003.

Davis, D., Ribarsky, W., Jiang, T.Y. and Faust, N. (1998). Intent, Perception, and Out-of-Core Visualization Applied to Terrain, Report GIT-GVU-98-12, pp. 455-458, IEEE Visualization '98.

Kehoe, C., Stasko, J. and Taylor, A. (1999). Rethinking the Evaluation of Algorithm Animations as Learning Aids: An Observational Study. Report GIT-GVU-99-10, Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Koller, D., Lindstrom, P., Ribarsky, W., Hodges, L., Faust, N. and Turner, G. (1995). Virtual GIS: A Real-Time 3D Geographic Information System. Report GIT-GVU-95-14, Proceedings Visualization '95, pp. 94-100.

Lindstrom, P., Koller, D., Ribarsky, W., Hodges, L. and Faust, N. (1997). An Integrated Global GIS and Visual Simulation System, Report GIT-GVU-97-07, Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Mayer, R.E. (1989). Systematic Thinking Fostered by Illustrations in Scientific Text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(2): 240-246.

Mayer, R.E. and Anderson, R.B. (1991). Animations Need Narrations: An Experimental Test of a Dual-Coding Hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4):494-490.

Mayer, R.E. and Anderson, R.B. (1992). The Instructive Animation: Helping Students Build Connections Between Words and Pictures in Multimedia Learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4): 444-452, 1992.

Mayer, R.E. and Sims, V.K. (1994). For whom is a picture worth a thousand words? Extensions of a dual-coded theory of multimedia Learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86: 389-401.

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Wartell, Z., Ribarsky, W. and Hodges, L. (1999). Efficient Ray Intersection for Visualization and Navigation of Global Terrain. Eurographics-IEEE Visualization Symposium 99, Data Visualization 99, pp. 213-224 (Springer-Verlag, Vienna, 1999) Acknowledgements The College of Engineering at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona is pleased to recognize the significant support that Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions, BAE Systems, Trimble Navigation, Bentley Systems, Inc., and ESRI have provided for the Geospatial Information Systems Laboratory. Through their support, the Geospatial Information Systems Laboratory has been equipped with the resources necessary to prepare students for real world engineering careers, support faculty and graduate research, and encourage curriculum development and outreach projects. Disclaimers National Science Foundation This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 01-26874 “Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”

Air Force Office of Scientific Research This material is based on work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Award No. F49620-01-1-0539. “Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”