Visualization of Complex Automotive Data: A Tutorial

Visualization is a method of representing large amounts of complex data in ways that are easier to understand, analyze, and support decision making. Large automotive manufacturers such as General Motors (GM) use visualization with great success. Visualization requires combinations of manual and automated data harvesting. Users must find and access the correct digital data based on a correct configuration of the product to be visualized. In addition, each type of visualization, from real-time design reviews to marketing-based image rendering, requires data to be prepared with appropriate materials, backgrounds, and lighting. Each of these processes requires a different set of expert users and their own optimized process to create specific visualizations or views of data. Making complicated data easier to understand has always been a challenge.