Architects and interior designers have supplemented their sketches of new buildings with computer-aided-design, or CAD, drawings for years. But the software tools were not interactive. A CAD drawing of a factory's interior, for example, could not be merged with schematics of machines planned for the shop floor to see how form and function flowed. A 3-D overview of the scene was needed.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, though, are developing a potential solution to this longstanding design problem. Scientists are working with Caterpillar Corp., Motorola Corp., and Searle Corp., to create software that lets industrial architects and designers create new factory facilities with virtual reality. The corporate funders have invested more than US$100,000 during the past few years to finance the 3-D software development.
"The technology is intended to basically come up with a new paradigm for doing conceptual design evaluations," said Dr. Prashant Banerjee, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UIC. "Right now, most of it is in the mind, or it is roughly sketched out and very, very abstract. And it was difficult for people from different backgrounds to actually read what was going on there."
The new VR software was built in C++ and Java by Dr. Banerjee and his graduate students, and it allows industrial designers to visualize and plan a factory while it is still in the design phase. The software runs on a PC as well as on the Cave Automated Virtual Environment, a room-sized virtual-reality theater devised at the university where graphics are projected onto three walls and the floor.
Designers have employed CAD for many years, but usually only during the last stages of design, after the idea has already been roughed out. "There is no design element in it (CAD); it doesn't do much design optimization, or help the user evaluate the drawing from different perspectives and objectives," Banerjee said. Architects have gotten around that problem by building plastic and wood models of their envisioned project, but that has been both expensive and time consuming. Another difficulty of the traditional design facilities is that designers in different regions of the country could not collaborate on a project in real time.
Searle Corp. is testing the system overseas, and Motorola and Cat have already implemented it on some projects. The ceiling in a factory building that Searle is building near Moscow is slated to be 6.05 meters high. However, two cylindrical pipes on top of a piece of equipment stretched to 6.08 meters, too high to fit in the assigned space. The Skokie, Illinois-based Searle reckoned they would have to redesign the building with a higher ceiling. But, the VR TME design tool indicated that the equipment would fit, because plans called for a gap between steel girders in the ceiling at the very place where the pipes would be placed.
"These are the very early days of using this technology," says Brian Dodds, director of manufacturing engineering at Searle. "What we're looking at here is satisfying our need for intuitive interaction with data. Most drawings today are in 2-D, so you're limited in your perspective."
What kind of impact will information technologies like this VR application have on the field?
Joyce L. Goia, a business futurist based in Greensboro, North Carolina, said architects have been surprisingly slow to embrace new technology. Goia sees a struggle developing between tech-savvy designers and old-school architects. Designers, she adds, will no longer have to be good artists to be good architects. "What matters more is your creativity," she says. "Your conceptualization skills will be in greater demand."
In the coming years, the university's VR software will likely be incorporated into CAD programs and immersive technologies, intended for use on broadband networks for telecollaboration.
"This is a product that can be commercialized, but we don't have much interest in that here," says Banerjee, noting that he has talked with computer companies like SGI about the prospect. "Someone else can do it."
