Problem analysis and requirements Design is a high-level intelligent activity performed by engineers supported by certain knowledge to achieve a goal. When a new task is given to a designer, he/she collects knowledge related to the design object and design methods by all means, including experience, technical books, and computer networks. The data related to the current task are combined and adapted properly. Interior design is a profession concerned with anything that is found inside a space - walls, windows, doors, finishes, textures, light, furnishings and furniture. All of these elements are used by interior designers to develop a functional, safe, and aesthetically pleasing space for a building's user. With the development of economy, an increased focus has been placed on developing solutions to improve the living environment. People almost haven’t the professional knowledge for home decoration. The system can help people planning the space of their house easily.
System Design For the convenience, The system is based on Brower/Sever model. There are some basic functions such as scene displaying, objects selection, and the movement of objects in the system. Scene displaying: Internet browsers on the clients (such as Mozilla and IE) do not support the file format of X3D. So it needs install Plug-in for X3D (such as BS Contact or FLUX Player). The browser with X3D Plug-in can display the scenes ,as figure 3. Objects selection: In our system, we have designed a living room with a TV, floor, a bookshelf, a tea table, a sofa and a floor lamp. In this objects, TV, Bookshelf, Tea table, Sofa and Floor lamp are transform nodes, and each object has several styles to be selected. In addition, Floor is a texture with the format JPG or GIF. The movement of objects: The movement objects includes Up, Down, Left, Right, Reset, Rotation. So the user can utilize the movement operations to plan the space of the living room.
Various approaches and technologies for the implementation of a virtual environment can be adopted. One possible approach to implement the system described above is using Java for the interface, we use 3DS MAX to create the models of the furniture. X3D Authoring tool is selected X3DEdit, and HTML for all other multimedia pages (2D visualization) and the integration of the system.
