The Department of Trade and Industry organised an awareness seminar at the April 1999 Construct IT exhibition at Olympia, West London. There were 4 organisations represented by speakers at the seminar.
Anthony Elliot of the Third Dimension Ltd demonstrated how construction firms were using virtual reality to speed up construction. As part of his talk he showed how the programme "Superscape" had been used to give a virtual tour of the Millennium dome on the web.
They use a programme called "3D Webmaster" which to construct architectural models that can be displayed on the web. The Third Dimension Web Site is at www.thirddimension.co.uk and the 3D model of the millennium dome is at http://www.vrmillenniumdome.co.uk/dome_vr/290555.htm
The second speaker was Matt Davies of Maelstom Virtual Productions Ltd. They use their own programme to model virtual worlds in fascinating detail. You are literally able to steer a path through a building and see even the smallest of details as you go. The programme runs on an ordinary PC that you can buy. Their web site at www.maelstrom-vp.com gives a demonstration of a walk through of a building.
The third speaker was Jennifer Whyte, of the Department of Civil & Building Engineering at Loughborough University. She has done research into how virtual reality can be useful for large volume house builders with various standard types of building. Her talk included outlining the need for responsiveness of the model for the outline planning stage where small details are not needed, as against the need for detail models at the interior design stage where a slower responsiveness might be tolerable. More information is available at
http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~cvjkw/index.htm
David Smith of Taylor Woodrow http://www.gatwick.twc.co.uk/ from where you can go to http://www.modelling.co.uk/ and look at a gallery of 12 projects where virtual reality has been used. The first web site has a login for their staff only. In the seminar we were shown a 3D model that we travelled through. On the second web site the models shown included:-
A project for part of the inside areas of the millennium dome. The 3D model allowed the millennium clients to realise the concept was not going to be suitable. Various railway projects where the available time to carry out construction work was short. The workman were shown a 3D model which allowed management to suggest how the work could be done. The site operatives pointed out how this could be improved upon. The planning was refined to include these comments and helped improve the construction in practice. Other 3D models included the underground extension work at the Royal Albert Hall, in London, Smithfield Market, the Heathrow Express, and Gatwick Airport.
Of particular interest is their use of a temporary web site for a project team to upload drawings saved in the drawing web format.(*.dwf). Sub-contractors are e-mailed to log on to the site and view the drawings with an Internet Browser plug-in called the Whip from www.autodesk.com
More information on using the whip is available at www.ealing.gov.uk/bc and an example of a drawing prepared by the writer is available.
Robert Hunter-Jones MSc CEng MICE MIStructE FIBC
www.hunter-jones.freeserve.co.uk
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