A Classroom-Friendly Technique for Viewing Solid Objects
Senior Project: 2002-2003
Diana Butter, Jeremy Garcia, Ryan Lewis and Tyler Nielsen
Many students have difficulty visualizing three dimensional images when what is
presented to them is two dimensional -- be it a drawing on the board or a
picture in a book. While some computer programs can let you "manipulate" three
dimensional objects, so as to view them from different angles, the student is
still seeing the object on a two dimensional surface -- the computer screen.
The idea behind this project was to present these images to students in the
way they should be presented -- three dimensionally. This allows the student to
actually walk around the object, view it from different angles, and get a
better feeling and understanding of the image presented.
The software is a basic editing tool that allows users to create a "scene" or
collection of three dimensional shapes (be it cubes, spheres, etc). The system
then takes these shapes and creates a series of "slices" (two dimensional
intersections of the objects at regular intervals) and prints these out onto
transparencies. When these transparencies are layered (with a bit of room
between them) over a light source, the viewer sees a remarkable recreation of
the entire object. The software was implemented in Java.
 User Interface
Display Device
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