Conversion Tab

Figure 8 shows the conversion tab GUI. The conversion interface has several sets of text boxes organized into colorized groups just like the rotation tab GUI. The input groups are colored brown, while the output groups are colored blue. The user selects what to convert from and what to convert to using the two combo boxes at the top left and right respectively. Once the necessary input values have been entered, then the user can press the convert button to see the conversion results. A right mouse context menu is also provided with copy and paste commands.

The conversion process works by first converting the requested input parameters into a quaternion and then converting the quaternion to the requested output parameters. This intermediate quaternion is always displayed at the bottom of the GUI as shown in Figure 8. This figure shows how the GUI is configured for computing the Eigen axis and angle from a quaternion. Many other conversion combinations are possible as shown in Figures 9 to 12.

QuatView includes the capability to convert sets of Euler angles with different rotation orders as shown in Figure 9. This capability allows the user to answer questions like "What three Euler angles are required with a "121" rotation order to give me the same orientation as a given set of angles with a "321" rotation order?"

When converting from a DCM, the user must be make sure that the input DCM is indeed a valid rotation matrix. This means that the input matrix must be orthonormal and have a determinant of +1. QuatView will check the input matrix and report an error message if the input matrix does not satisfy these requirements.

A right mouse context menu provides copy and paste commands for the input or output groups. These copy and paste commands process all of the separate text box values at once. This allows the user to copy and paste a complete quaternion, rotation matrix, or set of Euler angles at once, instead of having to copy and paste the data from each individual text box.

If the DCM is being input then a special DCM context menu is available with options to display the DCM orthonormalization error and also orthonormalize the DCM components. Figure 10 shows the DCM context menu, and Figure 11 shows the orthonormality error display.