Environment
SAMMIE provides a virtual environment, referred to as the ‘workplace’, that allows assessments to be performed and visualisations created. A number of basic modelling tools are provided allowing simple primitive shapes to be created. This does not provide the powerful modelling capability of many dedicated CAD tools however sufficiently detailed models can be constructed to support ergonomics analyses entirely within the SAMMIE system. In many cases data from an external CAD system will be available and can be imported into SAMMIE. Geometry can be named, coloured, shown/hidden and hierarchically grouped to create visual representations of the desired product or workplace and support easy manipulation of objects. For example legs, cushion, back can be grouped to form a chair. The objects can be manipulated as individual components, or as a complete chair by sliding or rotating them around in the environment. In addition geometry can be copied to, for example, quickly fill a control room with chairs.
The SAMMIE workplace allows modelling of individual product, workstations right through to complete environments.
To aid visualisation SAMMIE provides a number of other features including parallel (orthographic) and perspective viewing, wireframe and shaded rendering modes, a comprehensive lighting system, and the ability to use 2D bitmap images for texture mapping. Texture mapping allows realistic, non-functional detail to be quickly added to an environment to improve visual realism for presentation purposes to clients.
