BETTER DESIGN DECISIONS
Waterschap Brabantse Delta uses Connec2 to give end users more focus on operability and maintainability of components.
More focus on operability and maintainability
The construction department of Waterschap Brabantse Delta (a regional governing body, charged with the management of surface water in the environment) – uses Connec2 to give end users a good insight into what is going to be built. For their first design in VR they had a session organized and supervised by Connec2. After this experience, they started working with Connec2 themselves.
The construction department realizes all new construction and renovation projects within the organisation. The department acts as a link between the internal organization and external contractors such as contracting and designing parties.
Jan Poppelaars – technical construction manager – and John Gooiker – technical project manager – both work in the Construction department and are the initiators of reviewing designs in VR.
Challenges
“Many of our contractors now design in 3D. To subsequently test or assess these designs, these 3D designs are converted from different views into 2D representations. Evaluators of the 2D design then try to form a picture of the new situation to be realized. On the one hand, due to loss of information (3D to 2D) and on the other hand due to individual limitations in creating a 3D representation of the new situation from 2D, there is a chance that design errors have been overlooked. These are often corrected at a later stage, at additional costs.”
In addition, they notice that by using Connec2 a difference in the elaboration of designs in relation to accessibility, operability and maintainability of components. Viewing a design in a VR environment provides another dimension and is therefore better suited to the experience of the users. This makes the placement of components and details more noticeable, allowing better solutions to be devised.
Results
“End users report that they now have better insight in advance into what will be built. We have the impression that we have fewer failure costs because fewer corrections need to be made in the implementation phase. It is difficult to express this directly in hard cost savings. The profit in our organization mainly lies in visualizing the design for the users (management, maintenance departments, etc.). This means that designs are examined carefully and design decisions can be made better substantiated.”
Connec2 as a completely innovative instrument
Visualizing a design in 2D drawing, and even a 3D drawing, into reality is difficult for many users. Through the accessible implementation by Connec2, from 3D model to a virtual world, a design is quickly converted into reality. This makes users more involved in the design and issues such as operability and maintainability of components are examined much more closely.