Virtual Reality for AEC

Most people believe the construction process is an organized, linear and predictable phenomenon planned top-down into design, contracts and execution packages. But, in reality, the disputed factors of a building project include design decisions, deadlines, man-hours, cost-cutting, material decisions, and client satisfaction, among others. Virtual Reality (VR) is a contemporary, tech-enabled solution that resolves such disputes by addressing the limitations of design, time and money in relation to project stakeholders. As a virtual meeting platform for the building industry, all project stakeholders can virtually be in the same project space on a 1:1 scale, irrespective of their real-time locations.

Among the available architecture software options, Trezi is a VR product that allows as many stakeholders as are needed to collaborate on a project in a virtual work-space. The multi-user collaboration feature in Trezi replaces complications in coordinating physical meetings among project stakeholders. This feature enables appropriate documentation of scheduled meetings – both in the desktop and VR mode. Such meetings involve a host where he/she has the option to ‘gather’ the remaining guests within the virtual project space. The participating guests can contribute their comments textually which gets documented as part of the meetings. This helps to revisit the project space in order to implement changes. By doing this, the quality and pace of meetings are enhanced and there is little room for miscommunication.

Within the collaboration feature, Trezi accommodates a virtual building product catalog and a library that is home collectively to 1500 building products and materials. The database is curated to suit the needs of projects, vendors, architects, developers, and clients. This is for stakeholders in meetings to navigate and review the project in detail design-wise, planning-wise and material-wise. With utmost ease, one can analyze, examine and modify the design in the building project in this virtual space hosted by Trezi, along with other stakeholders who are involved in the experimentation process. In this way, multiple stakeholders can arrive at a consensus and hasten design decisions by being in the same space, thus saving time, money and avoiding errors in reality.

Virtual Reality is the future of architecture and construction as it provides a radically improved spatial understanding, generating an appealing virtual experience before the actual reality of the project manifests itself. This can be the best architecture software as Virtual Reality in construction is here to stay and is revolutionizing the way we work. VR betters the ethics of the design profession by eliminating prejudices between project collaborators. This, in turn, promotes transparency and creates happy clients who do not wait to address their own confusion on design decisions but feel involved, empathetic and connected.

*Immersive collaboration is helping stakeholders produce better work, reduce inefficiencies and save costs across the delivery value chain
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The AEC design environment is characterized by its reliance on multifarious collaborating parties spread across many different organizations and the entire project delivery lifecycle. In the AEC industry, collaboration typically involves interactions and collaborative decision-making amongst architects, building owners and operators, facility managers, construction professionals, contractors, engineering consultants, and building product manufacturers.

Today, the mode of collaboration relies primarily on the use of blueprints and 3D modeling software that lead to considerable back-and-forth iterations on meetings, emails, and calls. Design teams have increased in size and geographically dispersed; design cycle time has become more compressed, project deadlines are rigid, the amount of overall project data has become unwieldy, and in many cases, the designs themselves are becoming more complex. Multiple, non-intuitive design tools that do not communicate with each other create coordination problems and information loss as data flows between them, thus creating workflow inefficiencies. The lack of a standardized collaboration tool for stakeholders working in the AEC industry leads to poor design visualization, multiple design iterations, completion delays, cost overruns and a gap in client expectations.

This increase in collaboration chaos has created a critical need for a formal and effective collaboration process. Technology, as a major disruptor across different industries, has a lot to offer to the AEC industry as well. The introduction of immersive technologies in AEC has brought about a welcome change in the design collaboration process. While 3D rendering software might be great in showcasing your design, they are not a very effective collaboration tool since they do not allow interaction with the design. VR/AR is the only medium through which stakeholders can understand, share, experience and interact with the environment and use it as a way to collaborate with others. Immersive technologies such as VR-led 3D modeling ensure that all stakeholders refer to updated virtual models rather than working on their individual workspaces while collaborating on the project. The migration of a collaborative environment to the cloud enables multiple stakeholders placed across different geographies to work on a single fundamental and iterative design block creating a true virtual meeting platform for AEC stakeholders. Since these stakeholders can now immerse themselves into the design and take virtual tours rather than look at it externally, it has led to a far better understanding of design (much better than static and passive 3D renders and panoramas) which, in turn, has led to fewer errors and omissions in design and construction. Also, the option to interact with design models in VR, change and move things around, all in real-time on a single platform, helps all stakeholders to comprehend changes better and, hence, be clear with their individual roles in a project. All of this leads to the biggest outcome for the delivery cycle: clear communication of the design intent amongst multiple stakeholders and, importantly, to the end-customer.

While designers can showcase their design intent much better on a VR-led platform, other stakeholders can now also have a clearer picture of where their products and services would fit into the process, leading to much faster approvals, project finalization and even increase in profitability.

Immersive technologies are here to stay! Many architecture design firms have already started incorporating virtual reality architecture software into their workflows and, in the process, are bolstering effective and efficient collaboration with multiple stakeholders and staying ahead of the curve. VR infrastructure and devices are also becoming more affordable gradually and most architectural firms now have access to them. If you are a SketchUp user, check out Trezi to know more about real-time VR rendering and find out how you can convert your files from SketchUp to VR in a single click. Do feel free to mail us at info@trezi.com, in case of any queries.

As a practicing architect, I often found it difficult to communicate design intent to our clients. While working on a building project, we often used 3D modeling softwares/authoring tools but communicated the schematic and conceptual designs to clients and other stakeholders by generating 2D static renderings from fixed viewpoints on paper, Powerpoint presentations or renders on a flat computer screen.

I realized that what we visualize, understand, interpret and absorb from these traditional tools to communicate design intent – the images on our screen, the 2D static renders, or the floorplans and elevations on paper – are often disconnected from the reality of what’s planned to be built inside and outside of the front door, and none of the architecture software programs available could solve this problem. Since this medium is neither to-scale nor immersive, clients often do not fully understand an architect’s design intent, leading to significant collaboration-based shortfalls that result in coordination-related problems later leading to time and cost based losses.

Now, imagine providing your client an immersive virtual tour (using VR software for architecture and interior design) through their house or workplace that is at full-scale and color, even before it is built. It seems too good to be true? Not at all. This is how virtual reality architecture software is improving the way design intent is communicated – by providing an immersive and to-scale design experience, as real as it can get.

VR ensures that clients and other stakeholders – such as engineering consultants and contractors – understand the design better and before anything has been built. From the initial design stages right through to the construction stage, when the need to effectively collaborate is at its peak, the benefits offered by VR help the entire project teamwork with a single version of the truth. You can even get your client to participate in the design process, and finalize the design much faster with far fewer iterations. The results: zero gaps in expectations and a significant jump in both project profitability and client satisfaction.

The availability and affordability of high-performance virtual reality head-mounted devices (HMDs) such as the Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE and HP Mixed Reality Headset is improving by the day. VR is now the new and very real solution that can address the pain points that architects have suffered for long.

Immersive technologies are here! It is time for every architect to adopts them too. It is a logical progression from the way we have worked for years and solves a problem we have all long wished to solve.

If you are a SketchUp, Revit or Rhino user, check out Trezi to know more about real-time VR rendering and find out how you can convert your files from SketchUp to VR, Revit to VR, and Rhino to VR in a single click. Message us in the form below to learn how VR can benefit you and your company.

Trezi is an immersive VR product for the AEC industry enabling designs from 3D modeling software & architecture software to be experienced collaboratively in real-time.

AEC industry experts - the team behind immersive VR for architecture & the immersive technology design collaboration platform for the building industry, Trezi.

Trezi enables the presentation, communication & review of design in VR from 3D modeling software - SketchUp to VR, Revit to VR, BIM to VR.

Best 3d modeling software in VR - Trezi Lens, offers a real-time, immersive design experience to match client expectations & deliver improved profitability.