Development of a virtual winder for computer‐aided education using Virtools

Since operation of virtual winder can relieve the problem of lack of experiment on real equipments, virtual winder can be valuable complements to physical winder operation experiment. Virtools is the most widely used software for creating 3D VR environment. In this article, using Virtools to construct a virtual winder is demonstrated in detail by dividing the whole process into five steps: (1) creates 3D winder models in 3ds Max; (2) exports the models to Virtools format using Expert plugins (3ds Max Exporter); (3) designs scenes including cameras and lighters; (4) constructs the virtual winder including Behavior Building Block (BB), Scripts, and Virtools Scripting Language (VSL); (5) synthesizes and exports interactive coursewares of the virtual winder. The considerations and discussions in this article may be useful for building system of virtual education equipment in other subject areas.