CAD Integration in Virtual Reality Design Reviews for Improved Engineering Model Interaction
Leveraging virtual reality (VR) technology to enhance engineering design reviews has been an area of significant interest for researchers since the advent of modern VR. The ability to interact meaningfully with 3D engineering models in these VR design reviews is an important, though often neglected, capability due to the difficulty of performing data translation between native CAD data and VR compatible file formats. An automated synchronization interface was developed between a VR design review environment and a commercial CAD package that stream-lines the data translation process and enables enhanced visualization and manipulation tools. User experiments were performed to explore the hypothesis that allowing users to perform CAD-like view transformations and geometric manipulations in VR design reviews improves design understanding and decision making. Analysis of the experiment results show that enhanced interaction tools provide statistically significant advantages over a baseline VR design review environment for complex 3D models.