SketchUp for multi level Decision Trees

[sorgesu]

This is an interesting concept. I have been approached by someone in the health care field to see if I can design something in SketchUp that will allow Physicians to have a visual representation of the consequences of various decisions made in treatment. Because consequences of each decison lead off into various possible paths, my contact thought that using a 3D environment with a "walkthrough" that allows the doctors to keep site of the all of the paths at once would be neat.
What he envisions, unfortuneatly is something that allows a doctor to "click" on one Decision "OBjcet" which immediately takes him down a certain path. I explained that we don't have such "linking" ability from within SketchUP ( Hmm, wonder if Sketchy Physics might not be a way to go?)
Scene tabs would work but would get complicated if we had more than 2 paths. The doctor's arent expected to learn how to use SketchUp, so they are looking for something "canned" that can be easily used.
I have only very sketchy info at the moment, I will have more tomorrow, but I wonder if you guys have any brilliant ideas?

[tomsdesk]

HTML...?

[DavidBoulder]

You could record every possible decision step as short animation, and use Quicktime, flash or html to be able to trigger decision be clicking on part of the model. Don't know if this is most efficient way. There are some pretty good flowcharting applications out there that might make things easier, although maybe not in 3d.

[sketch3d.de]

would check something like e.g.:

http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.htm
http://www.inforapid.de/html/knowledgemapeng.htm
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/main.php

Norbert

[sorgesu]

Thanks for the links, and all the other suggestions.
I took a look at the links, and, if I understand them correctly, they are not "intersactive" which is what I believe this fellow wants. They all generate a static image much more quickly and effeciently for the purpose than SketchUp does, but they don't allow the sensation of "travelling along a path" in whatever direction.

Could html do that? Interactive and giving the sendsation of moevment in 3D (multiple directions)
Would we use html with links to a "page" that is a sketchup animation? IF you take a link to one animation, how would you get the next html "decision" to make to take you to the next animation and so on? Usually when animations complete, you need to manually close the window and go to another page on you're on, no?

I think he may content himself with just using the zoom/pan/orbit features in Sketchup following a delineated path for a given decision, but I was hoping to automate that a bit more somehow. I think this is a very creative idea on his patt, but I sense that you guys are right and that there may be some more appropriate application out there for him

[Gaieus]

Hi Susan,

Have a look at this example:
http://www.h2g2.hu/peregrinus/pan/bath/1.pan_gb.php?hely=courtyard
Here you can go from one room to the other, see images and texts etc. A well organised "place" like this with different doors symbolising different desisions and from wheer you have further spaces to go might do the trick.

Now this is Java (and wouldn't be easy to make although I know the guys who made it) but you can export 6 images to be stitched together into a QuickTime Panorama where you can also have "hotspots" (i.e. go to other "rooms").

[DavidBoulder]

Its very easy with QuickTime to put hyperlinks within a movie. Clicking the hyperlink could trigger another movie to start in place of current one or could open file webpage etc.

You could have the movie pause at the decision point, or if its something where a non-decision is an option (e.g. keep doing same treatment) the movie can keep playing and if hyperlink isn't clicked then the current movie keeps playing vs an alternate one. Like choose your own adventure books. In QuickTime if you have an object moving across the screen, that can be a dynamic hyperlink. it has been a long time since I used this, but if I remember right, its just another trick within the video that defines the hyperlinks (or in QT lingo hotspots) frame by frame. By the way you can link to a specific time within a move, vs. just the start of it.

What could be nice about this is that you could mockup your movie with simple model, and the if you want to make it really fancy, just swap out the movie files.

[sorgesu]

Wait a minute! what about this, remember hypercosm?
http://www.hypercosm.com/download/index.html

[Phil Rader AIA]

a bit expensive but this software has the ability to create imersive 3d navigatable environments.

http://www.quest3d.com/index.php?id=8

[sketch3d.de]

@sorgesu said:

hypercosm?

not to forget Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended (formerly aka Acrobat 3D) for creating and editing interactive 3D PDFs displayable on every system w/ a recent Adobe Reader installed, i.e. w/o installing another unwanted plug-in.

30-days trial avail.

Norbert