Visualization Tools For Industrial Design Problems Applied to Electron Optics

Abstract

At the David Sarnoff Research Center there exists a long standing research effort in support of the design of electron optic devices. The design process for such devices - the color high definition picture tube being the most recent and most outstanding example - involves the generation of very large volumes of data, from both simulation and experimentation. The goal of the design process is to simultaneously optimize performance parameters such as resolution, brightness, contrast and color purity, subject to manufacturing constraints, while varying the geometry or operating conditions of the electron gun or magnetic deflection system. To make effective of this multi-dimensional information requires visualization tools to aid designers in exploring the design space. In this paper, we describe in detail the nature of the interactive graphics tools we have developed. After a brief overview of the optical design process, we sketch the details of the engineering database, which contains the simulation and experimentation results. We then present general use visualization tools which can be applied to many engineering fields to manipulate arrays of data. We also describe paradigms for using these tools to perform constrained optimization. Finally, we present a prototype visual searcher for the design-space, a tool that allows designers to visually search through the design database and ask what-if type questions.