Through reviewing and comparing the current virtual shopping malls web sites integrated VR into E-commerce, this paper analyzed both the advantages and disadvantages of two kinds of methods for product presentation: 2D image based and 3D model based presentation method. Using the virtual shopping mall (EasyMall) as a showcase, we presented the architecture of the system and the development technologies, especially those in the mixed presentation method. The presentation and customization methods in the two related modules, including the PhoneShow for mobile phone and EasyShow for textile products, were discussed. It indicated that the integration of E-commerce with VR could provide consumers with virtual experience and intelligent service for business activities. Furthermore, the product presentation methods can be made available for use in different cases.

In this paper, an exponential bound of the distance between a Loop subdivision surface and its control mesh is derived based on the topological structure of the control mesh. The exponential bound is independent of the process of recursive subdivisions and can be evaluated without subdividing the control mesh actually. Using the exponential bound, we can predict the depth of recursion within a user-specified tolerance as well as the error bound after n steps of subdivision. The error-estimating approach can be used in many engineering applications such as surface/surface intersection, mesh generation, NC machining, surface rendering and the like.

This paper presents a new approach to create 3D visualization from discrete simulation results. This approach connects discrete event simulation directly to 3D animation with its novel methods that analyze and convert discrete simulation results into animation events to trigger 3D animation. In addition, it constructs a 3D animation framework for the visualization of discrete simulation results. This framework supports the reuse of both the existing 3D animation objects and behavior components, and allows the rapid development of new 3D animation objects by users with no special knowledge in computer graphics. This approach has been implemented with the software component technology. As an application in virtual manufacturing, visualizations of an electronics assembly factory are also provided in the paper to demonstrate the performance of this new approach.

In this work, a rational procedure has been formulated for the selection of points approximating slice contours cut in LOM (Laminated Object manufacturing) with first order approximation. It is suggested that the number of points representing a slice contour can be 'minimised' or 'optmised' by equating the horizontal chordal deviation (HCD) to the user-defined surface form tolerance. It has been shown that such optimization leads to substantial reduction in slice height calculations and NC codes file size for cutting out the slices. Due to optimization, the number of contour points varies from layer to layer, so that points on successive layer contours have to be matched by four sided ruled surface patches and triangular patches. The technological problems associated with the cutting out of triangular patches have been addressed. A robust algorithm has been developed for the determination of slice height for optimum and arbitrary numbers of contour points with different strategies for error calculations. It has been shown that optimisation may even lead to detection and appropriate representation of elusive surface features. An index of optimisation has been defined and calculations of the same have been tabulated.

The subdivision surface is the limit of recursively refined polyhedral mesh. It is quite intuitive that the multi-resolution feature can be utilized to simplify generation of NC (Numerical Control) tool paths for rough machining. In this paper, a new method of parallel NC tool path generation for subdivision surfaces is presented. The basic idea of the method includes two steps: first, extending G-Buffer to a strip buffer (called S-Buffer) by dividing the working area into strips to generate NC tool paths for objects of large size; second, generating NC tool paths by parallel implementation of S-Buffer based on MPI (Message Passing Interface). Moreover, the recursion depth of the surface can be estimated for a user-specified error tolerance, so we substitute the polyhedral mesh for the limit surface during rough machining. Furthermore, we exploit the locality of S-Buffer and develop a dynamic division and load-balanced strategy to effectively parallelize S-Buffer.