COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN

A major use of computer graphics is in design processes, particularly for engineering and architectural systems, but almost all products are now computer designed. Generally referred to as CAD, computer aided design methods are now routinely used in the design of buildings, automobiles, aircraft, watercraft, spacecraft, computers, textiles and many other products. For some design applications, objects are first displayed in a wireframe outline form that shows the overall shape and internal features of objects. Wireframe displays also allow designers to quickly see the effects of interactive adjustments to design shapes. Figures 1 give examples of wireframe displays in design applications.

Figure 1:
Color-coded wireframe display for an automobile wheel assembly.

Software packages forced applications typically provide the designer with a multiwindow environment. The various displayed windows can show enlarged sections or different views of objects. Circuits and networks for communication, water supply, or other utilities are constructed with repeated placement of a few graphical shapes. The shapes used in a design represent the different network or circuit components. For other applications, a designer can create personalized symbols that are to be used to construct the network or circuit. The system is then designed by successfully placing components into the layout, with the graphics package automatically providing the connections between the components. Animations are often used in CAD applications. Real-time animations using wireframe displays on a video monitor are useful for testing performance of a vehicle or system.

PRESENTATION GRAPHICS
Another major application is presentation graphics, used to produce illustrations for repots or to generate 35-mm slides or transparencies for use with projectors. Presentation graphics commonly used to summarize financial, statistical, mathematical, scientific, and economic data for research reports, managerial reports, consumer information bulletins, and other types of reports. Typical example of presentation graphics are bar charts, line graphs, surface graphs, pie and other displays showing relationships between multiple parameters.

Figure 2:
Two-dimensional bar chart and pie chart linked to a geographical chart.

Figure 2 gives examples of two-dimensional graphics combined with geographical information. This illustration shows three color-coded bar charts combined onto one graph and a pie chart with three sections. Similar graphs and charts can be displayed in three dimensions to provide additional information. Three-dimensional graphs are sometimes use simply for effect; they can provide a more dramatic or more attractive presentation of data relationships. The charts in figure 3 include a three-dimensional bar graph and an exploded pie chart.

Figure 3:
Three-dimensional bar chart, exploded pie chart, and line graph.

Entertainment
Computer graphics methods are now commonly used in making motion pictures, music videos, and television shows. Sometimes the graphics scenes are displayed by themselves, and sometimes objects are combined with the actors and live scenes. A graphics scene generated for the movie Star trekThe Wrath of khan is shown in figure 4. The planet and spaceship are drawn in wireframe form and will be shaded with rendering methods to produce solid surfaces.

Figure 4:
Graphics developed for the Paramount Pictures movie Star Trek

Many TV series regularly employ computer graphics method. Music videos use graphics in several ways. Graphics can be combined with the live actions or graphics and image processing techniques can be used to produce a transformation of one person or object into another (morphing).

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Computer-generated models of physical, financial, and economic systems are often used as educational aids. Models of physical systems, physiological systems, population trends or equipment, can help trainees to understand the operation of the system. For some training applications, special systems are designed Examples of such specialized systems are the simulators for practice sessions or training of ship captains, aircraft pilots, heavy-equipment operators, and traffic-control personnel. Here a viewing screen with multiple panels is mounted in front of the simulator, and color projectors display the flight scene on the screen panels. Similar viewing systems are used in simulators for training aircraft controltower personnel. The keyboard is used to input parameters affecting the airplane performance or the environment, and the pen plotter is used to chart the path of the aircraft during a training session.

OVERVIEW OF COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Due to the widespread recognition of the power and utility of computer graphics in virtually all fields, a broad range of graphics hardware and software systems is now available. For higher quality applications, we can choose from a number of sophisticated special purpose graphics hardware systems and technologies.

VIDEO DISPLAY DEVICES:Typically, the primary output device in a graphics system is a video monitor (figure-5). The operation of video monitor is based on the standard cathode ray tube design, but several other technologies exist and solid-state monitors may eventually predominate.

Figure 5:
A computer graphics workstation

A computer graphics workstation.

 REFRESH CATHODE-RAY TUBES:A beam of electrons emitted by an electron gun passes through focusing and deflection systems that direct the beam toward specified positions on the phosphor-coated screen. The phosphor then emits a small spot of light at each position contacted by the electron beam. Because the light emitted by the phosphor fades very rapidly. One way to keep the phosphor growing is to redraw the picture repeatedly by quickly directing the electron beam back over the same points. This type of display is called a Refresh CRT.
Magnetic Deflection Coil System

Focusing System

Phosphor-Coated Screen

Electron Beam Connector Pins

Figure 6:
Basic design of a magnetic-deflection CRT The primary components of an electron gun in a CRT are the heated metal cathode and a control grid. Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current through a coil of wire, called the filament, inside the cylindrical cathode structure. In the vacuum inside the CRT envelope, the free, negatively charged electrons are then accelerated toward the phosphor coating by a high positive voltage. The accelerating voltage can be generated with a positively charged metal coating on the inside of the CRT envelope near the phosphor screen, or an accelerating anode can be used.

 RASTER- SCAN DISPLAYS:The most common type of graphics monitor employing a CRT is the raster scan display based on television technology. In a raster scan system, the electron beam is swept across the screen, one row at a time from top to bottom. As the electron beam moves across each row, the beam intensity is turned on and off to create a pattern of illuminated spots .Picture definition is stored in a memory area called the refresh buffer. This memory area holds the set of intensity values for all the screen points. Stored intensity values are then retrieved from the refresh buffer and painted on the screen one row at a time (figure 7).

Figure 7:
A raster-scan system displays an object as a set of discrete points across each scan line.

COLOR CRT MONITORS:A CRT monitor displays color pictures by using a combination of phosphors that emit different-colored light. By combining the emitted light from the different phosphors, a range of colors can be generated. The two basic techniques for producing color displays with a CRT are the beam penetration method and the shadow-mask method.

 FLAT-PANEL DISPLAYS:The term flat-panel displays refers to a class of video devices that have reduced volume, weight, and power requirements compared to a CRT. A significant feature of flat-panel displays is that they are thinner than CRTs, and we can hang them on walls or wear them on our wrists. Current uses of flat panel displays include small TV monitors, calculator, pocket video games, laptops computers, armrest viewing of movies on airlines, as advertisement boards in elevators etc. We can separate flat-panel displays into two categories: - emissive displays and non-emissive displays. The emissive displays are devices that convert electrical energy into light for example plasma panels.
Conductors

Glass Plate

Glass Plate

Figure 8:
Basic design of a plasma-panel display device. Plasma panels also called gas discharge displays are constructed by filling the region between two glass plates with a mixture of gases that usually includes neon. A series of vertical conducting ribbons is placed on one glass panel, and a set of horizontal ribbons is built into the other glass panel (figure 8). Firing voltages applied to a pair of horizontal and vertical conductors cause the gas at the intersection of the two conductors to break down into glowing plasma of electrons and ions. Picture definition is stored in a refresh buffer, and the firing voltages are applied to refresh the pixel positions 60 times per second. Non-emissive displays use optical effects to convert sunlight or light source into graphics patterns. The most important example of non-emissive flat-panel display is a liquid-crystal device.

 LIQUID-CRYSTAL DISPLAYS (LCDs):The term liquid crystal refers to the fact that these compounds have a crystalline arrangement of molecules, yet they flow like a liquid. They are commonly used in small systems, such as calculators (figure 9). These non- emissive devices produce a picture by passing polarized light from the surroundings or from an internal light source through a liquid-crystal material that can be aligned to either block or transmit the light.

Figure 9:
A hand calculator with an LCD screen

Raster-Scan Display Processor

The organization of a raster system containing a separate display processor sometimes referred to as a graphics controller or a display coprocessor. The purpose of the display processor is to free the CPU from the graphics chores. In addition to the system memory, a separate display-processor memory area can also be provided. A major task of the display processor is digitizing a picture definition given in an application program into a set of pixel-intensity values for storage in the frame buffer. This digitization process is called scan conversion. Graphics commands specifying straight lines and other geometric objects are scan converted into a set of discrete intensity points.

INPUT DEVICES
Various devices are available for data input on a graphics workstation. Most systems have a keyboard and one or more additional devices specially designed for interactive input these include a mouse. Some other input devices used in particular applications are image scanners and light pen.

KEYBOARD:
An alphanumeric keyboard on a graphics system is used primarily as a device for entering text strings. The keyboard is an efficient device for inputting such non-graphic data as picture labels associated with a graphics display. Keyboards can also be provided with features to facilitate entry of screen coordinates, menu selections, or graphics functions.

Figure 20:
Economically designed keyboard with removable palm rests. The slope of each half of the keyboard can be adjusted separately.

 MOUSE:
A mouse is small hand-held box used to position the screen cursor. Wheels or roller on the bottom of the mouse can be used to record the amount and direction of movement. another method for detecting mouse motion is with an optical sensor. For these systems, the mouse is moved over a special mouse pad that has a grid of horizontal and vertical lines. the optical sensor detects movement across the lines in the grid. One, two or three button is usually included on the top of the mouse for signaling the execution of some operation, such as recording cursor position or invoking a function.

IMAGE SCANNER:
Drawings, graphs, color and black and white photos, or text can be stored for computer processing with an image scanner by passing an optical scanning mechanism over the information to be stored. The gradations of gray scale or color are then recorded and stored in an array. Once we have the internal representation of a picture, we can apply transformations to rotate, scale or crop the picture to a particular screen area. We can also apply various imageprocessing methods to modify the array representation of the picture.

Figure 31:
A three-dimensional digitizing system for use with Apple Macintosh computers.

 LIGHT PEN:
Figure 42:
A light pen activated with a button switch.

Figure 12 shows the design of one type of light pen. Such pencil-shaped devices are used to select screen positions by detecting the light coming from points on the CRT screen. They are sensitive to the short burst of light emitted from the phosphor coating at the instant the electron beam strikes a particular point. Other light sources such as background lighting the room, are usually not detected by a light pen. Although light pens are still with us, they are not as popular as they once were since they have several disadvantages compared to other input devices that have been developed. For one, when a light pen is pointed at the screen, part of the screen image is obscured by the hand and pen. And prolonged use of the light pen can cause arm fatigue. Also, light pens require special implementations for some applications because they cannot detect positions within black areas. To be able to select positions in any screen area with a light pen, we must have some nonzero intensity assigned to each screen pixel. In addition, light pens sometimes give false readings due to background lighting in a room.

DESIGN OF ANIMATION SEQUENCES

In general, an animation sequence is designed with the following steps:

Storyboard layout Object definitions Key-frame specifications Generation of in-between frames

Storyboard layout:
The storyboard is the outline of the action. It defines as the motion sequence as a set of basic events that are to take place. Depending on the type of animation to be produced, the storyboard could consist of a set of rough sketches or it could be a list of the basic ideas for the motion.

Object definitions:
An object definition is given for each participant in the action. Objects can be defined in terms of basic shapes, such as polygons or splines. In addition, the associated movements for each object are specified along with the shape.

Key-frame specifications:
A key frame is a detailed drawing of the scene at a certain time in the animation sequence. Within each key frame, each object is positioned according to the time for that frame. Some key frames are chosen at extreme positions in the action; others are spaced so that the time interval between key frames is not too great.

 Generation of in-between frames:

In-betweens are the intermediate frames between the key frames. The number of inbetweens needed is determined by the media to be used to display the animation. Film requires 24 frames per second, and graphics terminals are refreshed at the rate of 30 to 60 frames per second.

RASTER ANIMATIONS
On raster systems, we can generate real-time animation in limited applications using raster operations. Two-dimensional rotations in multiples of 90 are also simple to perform, although we can rotate rectangular blocks of pixels through arbitrary angles using antialiasing procedures. To rotate a block of pixels, we need to determine the percent of area coverage for those pixels that overlaps the rotated block.

Multimedia
Multimedia is a combination of two words one is multi that means more than one and another is media that means paying of information. In other words, we can say that multimedia is a combination of text, graphics, audio, video and animation elements. Multimedia means that the computer information can be represented through audio, video and animation in addition to traditional media (that in text, graphics, drawing and images) however the general definition of multimedia is as follows, Multimedia is a field connected with the computer controlled, integration of text, graphics drawing, moving, images(video),audio, animation, and any other media where every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally.

COMPONENT OF MULTIMEDIA:
1.
Text: The Alphabets, words, sentences and paragraphs consists of text. Text processing
refers to the ability to manipulate words, lines and pages. There are some properties of any text such as size, font, color and style.

2. Graphics (Picture/Images): A picture or image is data represented in two dimensional

scenes. A digital image compared of pixels arrange in rectangular array with a certain height and width. Each pixel may contain one or more bits of information representing the brightness of the image at the point and possibly including color information and encoded as RGB triples.

3. Audio: Sound with in an aromatic range available to human. On a computer an audio files
are record of captured sound that can be play back. Audio files are usually compressed for storage purpose or faster transmission.

4. Video: It refers to displaying still images in a high speed that our mind interrupts the
sequences of images as a movement. You can compare it with the number of frames/second i.e. higher with video with animation.

5. Animation:

The animation is the stimulation of movements created by displaying the series of pictures or frames. A cartoon movie on T.V. is the example of animation. Animation can be made with special technique like flash and with image application like photo-shop.

APPLICATIONS OF MULTIMEDIA
1. Multimedia
in business: The multimedia in business includes presentation, training,
marketing, advertising, product demo, and database.

2. Voice Mail: Here we can communicate by the voice only by sending the voice in the form
of electronic pulse from one system to another system, which converts it into voice.

3. Tele-conferencing: In it teleconferencing communicates with seeing the photos of the

person to which we are talking.

4. Multimedia in education: Multimedia is also useful in educational field. The computer

generated modal of the physical, financial and economical systems can be used as the educational purpose.

5. Multimedia of public sector: It is obvious that personal places and public places are
not awaiting to the multi media. The public place cannot be beyond the reach of the multimedia such that the multimedia used in hotels reservation, shopping and department store.

6. Virtual Realities: The multimedia is used in the CAD application, circuit designing and
stimulation of vehicles and it is used in the games.

DVD Technology
DVD initially stood for digital video disk but now stands for digital versatile disk. Like a CD, DVD is an optical storage system for read only, recordable and writeable application but being similar to the CD in many ways. DVD is considered to be a CD future replacement.