Nothing remains unchanged by the music of technological progress! And what area is to be the most susceptible to positive, progressive change than engineering? It is after all tied into building new technological marvels, including virtual reality devices that will allow you to meet your friends in VR, make various improvements in the field of medicine, make retail better and bring immersive sporting events to our homes. So, what is it that virtual reality does for engineering?

Design & Development

Design and development is a huge part of engineering. However, the big problem with it is that you’re making plans for three-dimensional systems on 2D planes. Well, VR takes care of that!

For example, Six sense’s MakeVR has engineers excited about the easy and organic approach it offers over standard CAD packages. MakeVR incorporates the company’s electromagnetic STEM VR control system.

In result, the user can pull, push, twist, spin, grab, resize and cut up shapes and sizes. It’s a lot more freeform design process than regular CAD and requires much less in the way of knowing how to use CAD systems.

Another great area of design and development is cooperation. VR soft allows people from various different spheres of the company — engineers, designers, ergonomists, marketers and even end users — from different continents if need be work on a single blueprint in real time. This way, everyone knows what is being done and why certain decisions are made. This, in turn, leads to better understanding of complex solutions, shortened development time, reduced risks, earlier customer definition freeze, and more reliable requirements.

Prototyping

Closely related to design, prototyping is one great saver of money and time. Simply put, it lets the designers trial project without manufacturing expensive prototypes or building mock-ups.

Peugeot, Renault, BMW, Ford, Jaguar were the ones to start the VR testing center idea, but now they’re developed by companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Airbus, Miele, BA. VR prototyping allows companies to check their products from, say, an ergonomic standpoint. It allows them to put a person in the spot where the end user will be and check things like movement space or the strain of repeated motions. Any kinks found this way can be ironed out without any physical prototypes.

While virtual reality definitely has its place in a myriad of different industries, what about the possibility of combing some of these virtual realities in real-life situations? An enhanced reality where the user can see and experience the real world around them, but with the addition of computer-generated images and objects in conjunction with what’s really there: enter augmented reality (AR).

Manufacturing and CAD

One of the main advantages AR brings to CAD is the ability to show a design that exists solely inside of your computer’s design software, as it is meant to appear in the real world. Imagine a machine operator or someone in the assembly department using a tablet to superimpose guided process instructions or a view of the final assembled product to follow during the assembly process. Within the last few years, this has all become possible with the appropriate CAD software, 3D data from that software, a smartphone or tablet with a camera and the right amount of computing power. With this technology, a target is used in the real world to keep the augmented 3D data in the correct placement of the real world. The target usually takes the form of a printed QR code. The target syncs the location of the digital 3D data with the real world you are viewing, allowing you to walk around the object and look up or down on the object just as you would if it was there in real life.

AR can be used in almost every phase of design and manufacturing, from the initial concept and design phase, in which you are reviewing and evaluating concepts and alternatives as they would appear in the real world, to the manufacturing phase, in which process steps, assembly examples and quality control information can be superimposed into an actual work environment. AR can provide detailed information on maintenance procedures, overlaying them directly onto your part or machine. You can even use AR in marketing your product or design, showing different configuration options and how the product might look in a client’s setting.

Here at Day One, we’re more than adept at adopting AR/VR in solving any problem that you put before us. Providing mobile apps and web apps using this technology as well as technology such as artificial intelligence and the concept of blockchain is our forte. Whatever your problem be, drop us a line and let’s have a conversation.