The increasing competition in the shipbuilding industry calls for efficient manufacturing processes. The adherence to budget and due dates requires accurate planning and fast reactions to unplanned events such as late deliveries of assembly parts. Virtual reality (VR) is a tool that can help improve these reactions. To be able to benefit from VR, the tool has to support the examined cases. Current VR solutions do not provide enough support for this; in particular, the problem of parts delivered late has not yet been solved efficiently because of the time-consuming and error-prone manual session preparation. There is no concept for an automatic session preparation according to the new assembly situation and no software-based support for finding and verifying a new assembly sequence using virtual reality. Within the research project Power-VR, an assembly planning prototype has been developed to assist the user during the entire review process. The user is provided with an automatic session preparation as well as with methods for investigating several assembly issues. Examples are the review of a specific ship section as well as the verification of a part assembly under consideration of assembly dates of the affiliated parts. Dynamic concatenation of model data with meta data during the session offers the possibility to automatically filter the parts of the model according to different kinds of information such as the delivery dates. The prototype further supports the finding and verification of assembly sequences by providing necessary information, for example, about the next part to assemble. Also an automatic model preparation for collision control is procured. The developed prototype can be handled immersively during the session. To further improve the control of the available functions, the use of a tablet PC is suggested. This device allows for a more flexible interaction with the system than the traditional flystick and provides additional information, adapted menus and buttons.
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