Engineering in 3D
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Presentation given at the 2015 Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds conference as part of the Public Service Education Panel - Past, Present, and Future of Government Social Education [VW] Programs
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Engineering in 3D
- 1. Engineering in 3D Simulating Engineering Concepts and Design with Virtual 3D Models
- 2. How we got here Where we are today What are the challenges we face What are the possibilities
- 3. Pre-1970s/1980s Board drafting with paper and writing utensils 1970s/1980s Computers and Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) begin entering the mainstream industry How we got here
- 4. How we got here
- 5. 1990s and on • 3D Models • Animation • Video • Game Engines • Synchronous design & learning environments (virtual worlds) • Immersive Devices • 3D Printing Where we are today
- 7. Public Involvement Planning Tool By Spencer Boomhower, Cupola Media In Unity3D http://www.cupolamedia.com/interactiv e-visualization-marmoset-street/
- 8. Visualizations Streetscape Project Visualization using Second Life
- 10. Asset Management Augview – AR Mobile Asset Management App http://www.augview.net
- 12. Education
- 13. Idea/Design Exchanges Engineers from anywhere in the world can meet in virtual environments to share ideas and discuss and compare engineering designs
- 14. Integration of tools Acceptance & management of technology within the industry Professional development What are the challenges?
- 15. CAD – 3D Modeling Data Collection (Surveying/LIDAR) Office Graphics (charts/tables) Images & Graphics (vector/raster) Animation Audio & Video Operational Data Feeds GIS & Databases Game Engines Viewers Integration of Tools? 3D Printing Automated Machine Guidance Integration?
- 16. We still have engineers not yet using CAD Acceptance & Management? Acceptance & Management? We still have top level managers who do not understand technology
- 17. We still have engineers not yet using CAD Professional Development? Professional Development?
- 18. Full integration and immersion for • Planning, Design, Construction, Operation, Costs • Education • Public Involvement/Input What are the possibilities? Employee program support
- 19. Immersive Design What are the possibilities?
- 20. Employee Support & Programs What are the possibilities? Health Hood – support for employee wellness programs
- 21. Thank You! Pam Broviak, PE Public Works Group/GovGrid http://www.publicworksgroup.com/blog pwg@publicworksgroup.com Thank You!
Notes de l'éditeur
- Hello everyone. My portion of the presentation discusses Engineering in 3D and how we can use this technology to simulate engineering concepts and design using virtual 3D models.
- Because we only have a short amount of time, I can only offer a very brief overview of the topic. First I’ll give a little background of engineering design then talk about where we are today. Then we’ll go over the challenges we face in using and integrating 3D into engineering. And we’ll finish up with a look into possible future uses.
- So prior to the 1970s, engineering was typically done on a drafting board using paper and writing utensils. For hundreds of years engineers learned how to design in this type of environment. Implementation of design or construction of projects relied solely upon the 2D plans produced by this method. As we look to the future, it’s important to keep this in mind because this approach is still strongly entrenched in many people who are still in the field. And because typically the leaders or top decision makers are the older members of a profession, the majority of engineers at that level learned their craft relying upon this approach. In the 1970s and 1980s those of us working in the industry saw the arrival of computers in our office and eventually computer aided drafting software was developed.
- I included this slide showing some graphics from the early 1900s just to give you an idea of how engineers back then did sometimes try to capture the appearance of a 3D object using 2D drawings. But because engineers back then were limited by the tools, this was often the best they could offer.
- But over the last 25 years we’ve seen a staggering introduction of tools. Engineers now not only have available CAD, but also 3D modeling capability and the addition of animation, video, gaming engines, synchronous design and learning environments such as virtual worlds, immersive devices such as the oculus rift, and 3D printing.
- These next few slides only show a few implementations of 3D models in the engineering industry. Because this panel focuses on public service, they primarily are examples from the civil engineering field rather than other engineering fields more typically found in the private sector such as electrical or mechanical. Although these same ideas and implementations can apply there in some cases. This slide is a screenshot from the Federal Highway Administration’s 3D modeling website. This initiative was launched by the FHWA through the Everyday Counts program which is focused on supporting innovation to cut costs and time and improve efficiencies. 3D engineered models have been identified and proven as providing significant increases in construction performance and are now commonly used out on construction sites in automated machine guidance systems where the model drives the equipment. In addition to this, engineered models also show promise in improving all phases of the engineering process including planning, design, and operations.. Because FHWA is a transportation agency, the focus of the site is primarily on that aspect of engineering. They have significant resources on the site including webinars and will also be hosting in-person workshops over the next year or so across the country if you are interested in attending.
- This slide is an example of how 3D models can be leveraged to involve the public in design. Spencer has set up an urban street environment using Unity3D and programmed it to allow people to alter the design and visualize the changes and impacts to the street, buildings, and sidewalks. Something like this could be developed for a project and embedded on a kiosk or website so the public can better understand impacts from a specific project and then offer more informed input on their preferences for designs.
- Sometimes it is difficult for people to visualize how a specific improvement will look when completed. This is an example of a simple visualization used for a project where we wanted to replace an alley that was completely asphalt pavement from building to building with a landscaped walkway to connect a parking lot to a street in our downtown. The image on the left was created in only a few short hours in Second Life and as you can see is not close to being perfect, but was good enough that people could get the idea of how it would look when done. The image on the right is the completed project. These types of visualizations are very useful for placing in newsletters or project websites.
- While visualizations are great, simulations are sometimes even better because they allow a more enhanced experience of how the completed project will not only look but function. This is a screenshot from a video created to show how traffic will move through a roundabout our office designed. With roundabouts people want to know how larger vehicles will navigate through and how traffic will or won’t back up and will enter or leave the roundabout. Because simulations allow for programming of traffic, all of these factors can be shown. And if gaming engines are used, there is the capability to allow a user to actually drive the project.
- Everyone who works with utilities has probably wished they could see underground and now with 3D models and augmented reality we almost can. One of the first commercial products available to provide this technology is offered by Augview. You can see in this slide their app is used on a mobile device and overlays 3D models or visualizations of utilities in an actual environment. So engineers can use this to better plan where to locate new improvements or perhaps troubleshoot where backups or problems in the system might be occurring.
- 3D modeling and particularly immersive environments also allow for the setup and operation of virtual trade shows which allow 24/7 access. These spaces can be used to demo actual products because they can be programmed to simulate their actual operation. And it is much easier to get an idea of how something really looks by being able to view a 3D model of it rather than a photo in a catalog. I also imagine that if vendors are willing to allow engineers to pick up 3D models from a virtual trade show, then the engineer could take what he needs for a specific 3D design he is building and see if it fits with his design.
- Using 3D modeling to provide education is not new in other industries such as healthcare, but it hasn’t been used much yet in engineering. However, I believe it is only a matter of time before engineers are also entering 3D environments in order to learn. This slide represents a build I created using OpenSimulator to educate engineers and others in public service about providing accessible accommodations. You can find out more about this build at the Public Works Group/GovGrid storefront on this sim.
- And finally one more example of how 3D immersive environments can allow engineers to present 3D models of engineering concepts and designs and share them with other engineers regardless of geographic location. This screenshot is of a build created in Second Life by an engineer located in the western states in the US. He works with stormwater facilities and prototypes them in Second Life. Occasionally we have met there and he has shared them with me. One time we were able to meet with another professional with whom he works and she offered some ideas of how they handle wetland development in their area of the country that I was not aware of. So I was able to share that with my coworkers and other engineers in my area for our own projects.
- But as good and beneficial as all that seems, there are challenges to implementing the use of 3D models in engineering which I believe are very important because they are what will keep us from taking advantage of something that definitely could increase production, reduce costs, and improve performance. I’ve identified 3 that I believe are the most critical. If you listen to the webinars from FHWA they indicate 7, one of which is hardware and software, which surprised me because from my experience it seems we are not even using hardware and software to its full capacity. After thinking more about it, I realized from the speaker’s perspective hardware and software might appear to be the issue, but the root cause of her problems are more due to the challenges I have listed here which I’ll explain.
- So first lets talk about integration of tools - here is a list of many of the tools available to us to generate and deliver an engineered plan. We’ve come a long way since that paper and pencil. But with all this, we have to make sure they all play well together. It doesn’t do me any good as an engineer if I can put hours and hours into a CAD drawing that I can’t easily export to use in anything else. And unfortunately when these tools first arrived, that was the approach companies seemed to take with them - they purposely designed them into a walled garden. Eventually most realized that wasn’t a reasonable or even necessary approach and today only a few have maintained that walled garden mentality and new tools already realize they need to work with other industry products. Unfortunately for the transportation industry and in particular the DOTs, they are still tied to a legacy product that has been slow to build integration into their system. From talking to one of their representatives in the past, it seems they still do not understand where the industry is headed and how vital it is that their software easily exports to these other tools. If you go through the how-to on the FHWA website, you’ll see references acknowledging the difficulty of getting a usable file out of the software. So you can see how someone who has only worked in a DOT that still uses this legacy software would believe that software is the problem because they have never worked with another CAD product that does easily integrate. So to me the problem is not software related- it can also be due to the next reason...
- Acceptance and management of technology within the industry. Some companies still do not want to accept that their products need to evolve with the times. And unfortunately because people, including engineers, do not like change, they also don’t want to evolve with the times. We still have engineers who never even learned CAD. And because we have CAD operators or designers who started out with this legacy software, they only know that product, and after 30+ years are near the end of their career. Many times, they are now the major decision maker at their agency. With only a few years left before retirement, they certainly do not want to think about changing from the software they’ve used for 30 years to something new even if it means doing so will increase their agency’s efficiency and performance. It is unfortunate, but that is a typical outlook of many people close to retirement. I’ve heard it time and again people tell me, I only have a few years left, so why should I go through all that effort when by the time I learn it I’ll be leaving. And while you might wonder how someone can get away with hijacking the innovation of a whole agency like this, remember, many times the decision makers above these people are also near or past retirement age and if they aren’t engineers might be even less likely to understand technology or perhaps even know how computers work. So the bottom line in many agencies ends up being that there are few people in an authority position with the knowledge or incentive to force innovation or change. So the software again gets the blame when it is actually due to someone not wanting to change. Another side of this which is more related to the hardware is that as IT took over management of software and hardware from engineering groups, they started to shut out engineers from having any input into purchases. So most agencies end up with engineers running CAD/GIS and other graphic intensive programs on the same computer that a secretary at the agency has to run word processing programs because IT has decided to standardize the hardware. And again, because many executive level people typically grew up without ever acquiring significant knowledge of computers, they continue to rely on IT to make the decisions not realizing this significantly reduces the performance and production of their engineering teams. So again at these agencies, engineers blame the hardware when really it is due to a problem with proper management of technology at an agency.
- Finally there is usually a significant learning curve to effectively use these tools and keep up with changes. And usually the public is adamantly and vocally against the training of public employees. I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Even though it seems counterintuitive, it’s just never seemed politically popular to use tax dollars to create a highly trained, competent, and innovative government staff.
- So finally let’s look to some future possibilities: Once we do fully embrace these tools, which will happen someday because tools will eventually have to work together and the computer literate generation will eventually take over decision making positions, we will then at that point have access to full integration and immersion for planning, design, construction, operation and cost management of engineered projects and systems. And I’ve started to realize there is also the possibility to use 3D models in employee support programs.
- One first example of a future use is taking something like a bike path design, turning it into a 3D model or environment, linking it to a stationary bike that responds to the engineering design like the slopes and curves and then having the user interact through a device like the oculus rift. By doing this, an engineer can prototype a design or design alternatives, and have users to bike the design and offer feedback on it.
- Here’s a slide to represent how 3D models can be used to support employee programs. This particular build is exploring how it can assist employee wellness or fitness programs by offering engineering staff a place to get information about health and exercise. This idea could be extended to other benefit programs that provide 3D scenarios or perhaps even serious games for providing retirement or investment information.
- So thank you very much for your attention.