Concept design and implementation of computer virtual reality technology

Design expression has become a diversified display form in the information age. The application of virtual reality technology has greatly enhanced design ideas and design expressions. It gives people an intuitive, friendly and interactive experience. Compared with traditional products, the products developed and designed in this way greatly reduce the risk of being put on the market, and also provide a better basis for corporate decision makers to find business opportunities and judge whether concept products can be further developed and produced.

1. Virtual Reality and Virtual Reality Technology

1. Virtual Reality (VR) and Virtual Design (VD)

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that uses computers to create a simulated environment, immerses users in the environment through a variety of sensor devices, and enables users to interact directly and naturally with the environment. The so-called simulated environment here is a computer-generated three-dimensional graphic with color. It can be a true reflection of a specific real world or a purely imaginary world. Sensor devices include three-dimensional helmets, data gloves, data clothes and other devices worn by users and sensor devices set in the real environment. Natural interaction refers to operating the objects in the environment in a daily way and obtaining real-time three-dimensional feedback. Virtual reality is a new human-computer interaction system that can produce various sensory stimulations to the participants, such as hearing, vision, smell, and touch, giving people an immersive feeling. People can interact with the computer-generated environment in a natural way.

Virtual design is a "design method based on virtual reality technology and targeting mechanical products". With the help of such design methods, designers can interact naturally with multi-dimensional information environments through a variety of sensors, and achieve perceptual and rational understanding from a qualitative and quantitative integrated environment, thereby helping to deepen concepts and generate new ideas.

2. Virtual Reality Technology

Virtual reality technology is a comprehensive technology that combines human imagination and electronics. It uses multimedia computer simulation technology to create a special environment. Users can interact naturally with this environment through various sensor systems, thereby experiencing richer feelings than the real world.

2. Definition and connotation of conceptual design

Since Pahl and Beitz proposed the term "conceptual design" in the book "Engineering Design", people have been studying conceptual design for more than ten years. They define it as: after determining the task, through abstraction, formulating functional structure, seeking appropriate action principles and their combinations, determining the basic solution path and obtaining the solution, this part of the design work is called conceptual design.

Domestic scholars have also conducted a lot of research on concept design. Among them, Deng Jiaqi defined "product concept design" in his book "Product Concept Design" as "a series of orderly, organized, and targeted design activities from analyzing user needs to generating conceptual products. It is manifested as a process of continuous evolution from rough to fine, from vague to clear, and from abstract to concrete."

Over the past few decades, people's research on conceptual design has increased and deepened, making the connotation of conceptual design more extensive and profound. It is mainly reflected in: market demand analysis, function analysis, working principle of function, conception of action behavior, selection of behavior carrier and composition of scheme according to the requirements of each stage of product life cycle. It can be seen that determining the scheme is the final result of conceptual design, and satisfying the whole process of product life cycle is the key to conceptual design. In terms of design methods, various methods are more comprehensively integrated to seek the best comprehensive solution, while making the design more creative.

Concept design is the idea of ​​a product or component, and its purpose is to capture the basic shape of the product. At this stage, the shape and precise size of the product have not yet been determined, and the designer has a certain degree of freedom to change, so the design scheme should be examined as much as possible in order to select the one with the lowest production cost and good creativity. Traditional computer-aided design is often a two-dimensional interactive tool, lacking three-dimensional or multi-dimensional functions, but the product is a three-dimensional component, which will inevitably lead to low efficiency of human-computer interaction. The current computer-aided design system requires the definition of the size of the part, but such size may not be accurately obtained or there is no need to accurately define it at all during the conceptual design stage of the product, which will inevitably affect the design efficiency and cycle. Traditional computer-aided design requires the cooperation of two types of personnel, namely product designers and computer draftsmen. Product designers convey the conceptual information about the product to computer personnel through sketches or oral methods, which leads to the loss of information or the misinterpretation of the draftsman. If the designer himself directly participates in computer-aided design modeling, the current computer-aided design system is complex to operate and has poor interactive capabilities, which greatly distracts the designer's energy and limits his thinking. In order to overcome such limitations and give full play to the creativity of designers, people began to introduce virtual reality technology into computer-aided design systems for conceptual design, effectively combining virtual reality technology with conceptual design, and using rich and intuitive interactive methods to conduct conceptual design in a virtual environment, thereby saving time in accurately depicting and defining the dimensions of products. This is computer-aided conceptual design based on virtual reality technology, namely virtual conceptual design.

3. Research directions and application prospects of virtual conceptual design

(I) Two issues that should be paid attention to in conceptual design

1. Concept visualization in a virtual reality environment. Concept visualization means that designers transform market demands into concrete visual forms through pictures or models. Whether the concept design can meet the requirements of the target users, the "seeing is believing" pictures or models are the most convincing.

2. Human-computer interaction interface in virtual reality environment. To realize human-computer interaction, a series of technical problems must be solved to form a harmonious human-computer environment. Virtual reality is an immersive interactive environment based on computable information. Specifically, it is a modern high-tech virtual environment with realistic audio-visual and tactile integration in a specific range with computer technology as the core. Users can interact and influence each other with objects in the virtual environment in a natural way with the help of necessary equipment, thus generating the feeling and experience of being "immersed" in an environment equivalent to the real environment.

2. The Prospects of Virtual Reality Technology in Concept Design

In a virtual reality environment, the concept design of products is the basic content of virtual reality technology. Under the good visualization conditions provided by computer virtual reality, the three-dimensional model established by computer-aided design is interactively modified in terms of geometry, function, processing and assembly. Virtual reality is used to provide users with various perceptual interaction means such as audio, video and touch, which can maximize the convenience of user operation, thereby reducing the burden on users and improving the work efficiency of the entire system. Relevant personnel can evaluate various aspects of the prototype, including visual effects and ratios between components. According to the preferences and requirements of different users, in different virtual environments, you can personally experience the modification of the model; select the optional components of the product, and observe the design and modification process.

Faced with the challenge of increasingly fierce product market competition, it can be foreseen that computer-aided conceptual design based on virtual reality technology will have great development and will eventually be seamlessly integrated with existing computer-aided design systems.