Inspiration
As a mechanical engineer working in the automotive industry, I have had my fair share of trouble with 3D model viewers. Try as you might, depicting a three dimensional object on a two dimensional computer screen in a completely intuitive manner is a next to impossible. When I first tried on the Samsung Gear VR headset, an affordable Virtual Reality headset, I realised that this would be perfect medium to view my designs in. VR would disrupt the CAD industry. It offered one a sense of scale, the ability to view a design without the immense cost of actually prototyping it. To my dismay, however, there are currently no simple 3D model viewers out there for the Gear VR or the Oculus Rift. Another similar industry that shares these problems is the architecture and interior design industry. Building an open source CAD model viewer in VR would solve a lot of problems in both these industries.
What it does
Our app enables the user to effortlessly import a CAD model of a car or a building and view it in Virtual Reality using the Samsung Gear VR headset. We also enable the user to change the paint on the car, rotate it, measure distances using a virtual ruler. On the architecture side, we enable the user to import a surrounding of his choice, import the building CAD model into VR and walk around the building, thereby helping the user know what his house will look like before it is even built.
How I built it
We exported designs from AutoCAD and Catia(a tool used to design industry grade cars) and used the Unity Game Engine to view it in VR and implement the aforenmentioned features in VR. Scripting in Unity is typically in C#.
Challenges I ran into
Unity is targetted toward the gaming industry which uses a bunch of 3D model formats that are entirely different from those used by the architecture and automotive industries. Converting the .skp/.rvt files of the architecture industry and the .step/.wire files of the automotive industry into the .fbx format that is standard in the gaming industry with minimal loss in quality was the biggest challenge.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
None of our team had ever worked with Unity or developed games in the past. Enabling colour switching, and measuring virtual distance in VR at runtime is not present in any other app thus far. Navigating through the nascent VR SDKs on the game engine, importing the 3D formats successfully and then implementing the aforementioned features was incredibly hard and we're extremely proud that we could implement it.
What I learned
To plan well in advance and split the work efficiently amongst all the team members. We were disorganised at times and that maybe cost us a little in terms of how quickly we got our work done.
What's next for TDW
We intend on improving the performance and overall VR experience to make it much more impressive. There is also drastic scope for improvement on the UI side. We plan on releasing the code open source and encouraging more experienced Unity developers to help us improve on these aspects. We also have demos lined up with a major automotive company and some architects to get feedback on our app.
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