Collaborative environments of Intelligent Box for distributed 3D graphic applications

The paper treats a constructive visual software development system for interactive 3D graphic applications. Our system, Intelligent Box represents any objects as reactive 3D visual objects, which are called Boxes that can be manually combined with other Boxes. It provides a uniform framework for the concurrent definition of both geometrical compound structures among Boxes and their mutually interactive functional linkages. It works as a user friendly rapid prototyping software development system. We have introduced a collaborative environment into the Intelligent Box system as a function of a particular Box called a RoomBox for distributed 3D graphic applications. Multiple RoomBoxes on different computers share specific user operation events with each other. Those RoomBoxes virtually provide some users with a shared 3D space. Already developed Boxes work in a shared 3D space without any modifications. Therefore, it is possible to construct distributed 3D graphic applications rapidly and easily by using RoomBoxes. The paper introduces the RoomBox, describes its mechanism and shows a few application examples