News

Is it time for a VR/AR collaboration solution?

By The Wild

If your team’s BIM and design collaboration process is a breeze, congratulations—you’re in a rare situation. With more people working remotely and building projects moving faster than ever before, it’s easy to make critical mistakes in your process. 

In this new distributed era, there’s been a lot of buzz about Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) becoming the next technology to change how we work. How do you determine for yourself if VR/AR is more than just the latest, novel new gimmick?

When considering to adopt new technologies like VR/AR, it’s important to take time to think about how your long-term business goals and team needs fit into the available solutions, not vice-versa.

Here are some real benefits of using VR/AR collaboration so you can determine if your team is ready for this kind of change.

Articulate Design Intent in Real-Time
Today’s high demands can make it difficult to articulate design intent to teammates and stakeholders.  It’s crucial for your team to be able to meet in real-time in order to keep everyone aligned and make their design intent clear. 

You can now collaborate and experience your designs together more efficiently using VR/AR. Using these technologies, you can have a more effective meeting by experiencing the design, rather than just showing it out of context. Your teammates can rapidly prototype and capture ideas in an immersive environment, no matter where they’re located, so they can save time and gain faster project approval. Immersive technology is the key to helping everyone unlock better decisions in the design process. 

Reduce Costly Change Orders
In any project big or small, making a design change is incredibly costly. The ability for organizations to effectively manage change orders is impacted directly by the communication lines between teams and departments and how effective that collaboration was in the project. Change orders have a direct impact on your project’s profitability, and miscommunication on design intent is largely the culprit.

Additionally, it’s important to catch critical errors—before going to the next stage in the design process, whether it’s off to the engineering team or breaking ground for a large-scale construction project. For larger companies, especially for those that have to coordinate the moving pieces between BIM and design, precise collaboration is especially crucial. 

If these are issues for your team, you’ll need to minimize the cost associated with these changes orders that occurred by miscommunication and unnecessary design rounds. 

Through real-time immersive design reviews in VR/AR, teams and stakeholders can be involved earlier and help make faster, more informed decisions, and eliminate the need for multiple design rounds—all saving you time, money, and frustration. 

Get On the Same Page as a Team
Does your team need VR visualization for just one person at a time? You might benefit from sharing a collaborative experience with multiple people at the same time. Seeing and talking with your collaborators in real-time allows you to have the same view of tools, UI, and body language for a better-shared understanding in the design process. 

In an increasingly remote work culture, you might also benefit from the freedom of unlimited cloud storage. Large firms that work with distributed teams, heavy BIM files, and collaborative workflows often opt for cloud storage for the flexibility and security it provides.

The Wild: Immersive Collaboration for Teams
With The Wild, teammates and stakeholders can meet inside project models at any time, from VR, AR, or desktop, making real-time coordination and BIM collaboration easy for everyone, and accessible from anywhere.

Key Features:

  • From Revit to VR: Our Add-In creates a persistent connection between your Revit file and The Wild, so your spaces can easily be accessed from Revit and updated as your project evolves.
  • Robust BIM Tools: View BIM data with your team, control layer visibility, or annotate your Space with measurements
  • Multi-user: Collaborate in real-time with up to eight people in a space, fully synchronized, from anywhere.
  • Cross-platform: Collaborators can join from desktop (macOS and Windows), virtual reality (HTC Vive, Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality), and augmented reality (iOS).
  • Persistent Spaces: Your spaces live in the cloud and are accessible from anywhere, anytime, evolving along with your project.
  • Access BIM 360 models: Easily create a space from any model in your BIM 360 library, no matter the source.

Is it time for your team to evolve your collaboration process? Learn more and chat with our team at thewild.com

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