The Status Quo
Typical environment inspection practices are manual operations and rely heavily on visual inspection. However, the visual database is not necessarily the same as that used for simulation calculations, including those that govern simulation controlled behaviors. Thus, a visual inspection may not even focus on the most appropriate data. One strategy used to overcome this problem is to simulate use of “all” of the data, prior to an actual simulation event.
This semi-automatic approach, moving simulation entities repetitively across the database, may not examine all relevant data, (only a small percentage in most cases), cannot be used in areas where specific simulation entity movement is prohibited, cannot describe any problem cause, only locates general areas that may contain environment errors, may be influenced by errors in the simulation control software, and does not provide any guide to appropriate corrective actions.
It can also be very time consuming …