What is this?
This project is the Final Year Project of Department of Computer Science and Engineering in The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. This is supervised by Professor David Rossiter in 2006 - 2007 and one of the Best Final Year Projects at that year. Besides, it wins the First Runner-Up and Bronze Award in Hong Kong Region and Final Round in Gui Zhou, China of 2007 Amway Pan-Pearl River Delta Region Universities IT Projects Competition respectively.
The purpose of this project is to analyze the Feng Shui of a flat and the surrounding. Flat design is presented through a 2D display. The system will give appropriate recommendations on how to best arrange the flat for most efficient feng shui. Finally, the system will generate a 3D environment for the user to view his/her ideal flat.
What is Feng Shui?
Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese traditional art of placement based upon a philosophy of the movement of “Chi” or nature energy through our environments. It has a long history and shows us how to support the flow of energy in our lives to augment health and prosperity. It is indeed a combination of environmental study and orientation study aimed to harmonize the energies of the universe with the human race.
Feng Shui is an abstract and difficult theory for most people. We have developed software that can reveal the Feng Shui theory in a more concrete and easier way. With the system, anyone who is not familiar with Feng Shui should now be able to understand this traditional Chinese art more and create his/her ideal flat.
Scope
In fact, in Feng Shui profession, there are lots of factions with different kinds of Feng Shui principles. It is necessary for us to choose one of them to follow.
The system implements most of the Feng Shui rules. The major rules such as “Earth Luck”, “Eight Mansions”, “Flying Star” together with 55 other sub-rules are included. There are three types of recommendations given by the system. They are swapping the usage of rooms, adding some Feng Shui objects, and moving the original position of furniture inside the flat. The system is so flexible that the user is able to choose to or not to accept any recommendations so that they can build their desired floor plan. The final Feng Shui report allows the user to know more about their flat’s Feng Shui status and some brief explanations of the Feng Shui rules. The user is able to view the 3D environment as if he/she was personally inside his/her drawn floor plan.
System Work Flow
- Choose the Language
- Input Basic Personal Information
- Floor Plan Drawing
- Feng Shui Analysis and Recommendation - Room Swapping
- Outdoor Setting
- Furniture Allocation
- Feng Shui Analysis and Recommendation - Placing Feng Shui Object and Moving Furniture Positions
- Final Feng Shui Report
- 3D Environment Rendering
1. Choose the Language
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User is allowed to choose three different languages. There are English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.
2. Input Basic Personal Information
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The user is required to enter their personal information at the first stage. All of this information is essential to the Feng Shui analysis of the system.
3. Floor Plan Drawing
The user is allowed to draw their desired flat freely in the system’s floor plan drawing panel. This can be done by choosing the suitable components on the left hand side’s tool box kit and then placing them at the desired position on the panel.
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4. Feng Shui Analysis and Recommendations - Room Swapping
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In the first recommendation section, the user is asked to input their preferred Feng Shui recommendation priorities. There are 6 priorities in total. They are “Good at Health”, “Good at Relationship with others”, “Good at Harmonious Family”, “Good at Wealth”, “Good at Pickings” and “Good at Producing Offspring”. The user can prioritize them from the most important one to the least important one by putting them in the right sequence in the form.
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Once the priority is confirmed, the system will perform the first Feng Shui analysis. This analysis is based on the Eight Mansions rules only. Then, the system will give the respective recommendations and explanations and tell the user how different rooms should be swapped based on the priority set before. There will be a section showing the marks of current Feng Shui state and the marks after taking our recommendation on room swapping so as to let the user compare the two Feng Shui states. The marks include health, wealth, career, family relationship and interpersonal relationship. A recommended floor plan will then be shown and the user can choose to or not to accept it.
5. Outdoor Setting
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For each view of main entrance and windows of the user’s flat, the user is asked to select from the right hand side’s list box the objects they can view from that main entrance or window. The user also needs to set in each view the approximate distance of each object.
6. Furniture Allocation
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Different kinds of furniture can be selected from on the tool box kit. They are categorized with different sub-headings. After selecting the desired furniture, the user can freely place it on the floor plan drawing panel at any position.
7. Feng Shui Analysis and Recommendation - Placing Feng Shui Object and Moving Furniture Positions
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Click to open image at normal size
In this section, there will be a form popped up showing all the matched rules and guiding the user step-by-step on how to place different Feng Shui objects for each rule matched.
For each matched rule, there will be a highlighted area on the floor plan telling the user which part of the flat is related to that rule. All the matched rules will be shown on a tree list in the form and categorized according to the rule’s related part of the flat. The user is allowed to select the rule they want to view freely from the list. The user can choose to follow the recommendations or ignore them. There are two types of solutions the system provides. The first type is to place the Feng Shui objects for the user automatically at the suitable places while the second type is to move the related furniture to the right place. Whenever there is any flow of ‘Chi’ for the current selected rule, they are shown as some arrows representing the strength and the direction of the ‘Chi’.
8. Final Feng Shui Report
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Click to open image at normal size
Click to open image at normal size
Click to open image at normal size
In this section, there will be a form popped up showing all the matched rules and guiding the user step-by-step on how to place different Feng Shui objects for each rule matched.
The final Feng Shui report will show all the rules’ analysis. It will mainly be divided into four parts: General Information, Eight Mansion Analysis, Flying Star Analysis and Other Rules’ Analysis.
9. 3D Environment Rendering
After the user completes the room and furniture setting, the system is able to generate the 3D environment of the user’s flat so that the user can preview his/her desired flat as shown in the following figures. The system can let the user view their flat in a way as if he/she was personally entering their flat by simply pressing the respective buttons to move forwards and backwards.
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Click to open image at normal size
Click to open image at normal size