SUMMARYRecently, high-quality 3D graphics have become available at low cost. A number of attempts have been made to visualize information in a very large system by using 3D graphics. However, the development of a 3D graphical user interface system requires greater cost than that of a 2D graphical user interface system. To solve this problem, we propose an effective method to easily construct a 3D graphical user interface for SCADA. Then we demonstrate the advantages of the 3D graphical user interfaces constructed by our method through user experiments.

This paper describes the automatic generation of system descriptions for SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. The proposed method produces various types of data and programs for SCADA systems from equipment definitions using conversion rules. At first, this method makes directed graphs, which represent connections between the equipment, from equipment definitions. System descriptions are generated using the conversion rules, by analyzing these directed graphs, and finding the groups of equipment that involve similar operations. This method can make the conversion rules multi levels by using the composition of graphs, and can reduce the number of rules. The developer can define and manage these rules efficiently.

Recently, high-quality 3D graphics has become available at a low cost. A number of attempts to visualize information of a very large system by using 3D graphics. Although development of a 3D graphical user interface (3D-GUI) systems, however, usually needs cost more than that of a 2D graphical user interface (2D-GUI) system. To improve this problem, some programming libraries have been developed for 3D-GUI. But they require developers to write lines of source code after understanding many kinds of API to construct 3D-GUI systems. In this paper, we propose an effective method called "3D Generating & Customizing Method (3D-GCM)" to construct 3D-GUIs easily for SCADA. We have already proposed 2D-GUI constructing method 2D-GCM, 2D Constructing & Customizing Method to help developpers build 2D-GUI system easily. It is used in actual fields such as SCADA. It is cosisted mainly two steps to construct 2D-GUI. First, default 2D-GUI is automatically generated from data and functions included in an application program(AP). Then, the default 2D-GUI is customized interactively while running the AP to get final 2D-GUI. 3D-GCM consists of two similar steps to 2D-GCM to construct 3D-GUI. First, default 3D-GUI which is previously decided is generated from an existing 2D-GUI. Then, default 3D-GUI is customized interactively while running the AP to get final 3D-GUI. Relationship between 3D-GUI and the AP data to display or to control is kept the same as that between 2D-GUI and the AP data even while 3D-GUI is being customized. This method allows AP developers to construct 3D-GUI using existing 2D-GUI without knowledge of 3D-GUI programming. It also allows end-users to customize 3D-GUI flexibly while running the AP. To implement this method, we have developed a C++ class library called GhostHouse. In order to realize flexible customization while keeping the relationship between 3D-GUI and SCADA taget data, we introduced two classes called Model-Ghost and View-Ghost into GhostHouse. Model-Ghost manages AP data, while View-Ghost manages 3D-GUI parts. These Ghosts realize interactions between a 3D-GUI and AP data. Since references between View-Ghost and Model-Ghost are implemented by a link object uses consistent communication protocol, references between View-Ghost and Model-Ghost can be kept even when a 3D-GUI part is replaced with another part. 3D-GUI can be customized easily since it is not necessary to