A new factory was being setup in Taiwan and required a flexible visualization system.
Consulting with the customer we decided to use DXF as the basis of the graphics. The advantages were:
- Both the factory floor layout and the actual vehicles already existed in AutoCAD format and all we had to do was save them in DXF format.
- Updates to the DXF file would be very easy, simply copy the new factory floor design into the appropriate directory.
- Since DXF is a vector format it would be possible for the visualization program (which I was writing) to implement zooming without loss of detail.
The above screenshot shows a general view of a factory in Taiwan which uses the system. The very same program was used in a Swiss factory, only the DXF file of the layout was changed.
Below shows a closeup of a part of the factory floor:
If the user clicks on one of the AGVs (for example AGV 04 above) then a dialog box pops up with information about the job the AGV is doing in that moment.
The speed of the update is configurable. The data for the graphics updates arrive from the main AGV controlling software, via a network.
