Real time, full-scale analysis immediately and positively impacts all stakeholders in slightly different ways. Architects and engineers rush to validate their designs naturally looking for opportunities to improve their product. Owners experience a sense of relief and tend to take immediate ownership of their prior decisions and look forward to future input and final product expectations.
Real time, full-scale analysis immediately and positively impacts all stakeholders in slightly different ways. Architects and engineers rush to validate their designs naturally looking for opportunities to improve their product. Owners experience a sense of relief and tend to take immediate ownership of their prior decisions and look forward to future input and final product expectations.
FullCon Solutions has partnered with Duke University and Iowa State, owners of six-sided CAVE environments capable of viewing fullsize models, to rent time on these multimillion dollar simulators. By using these tools to communicate designs at full scale prior to construction, the designers and users of the design can fine-tune what the actual experience will be within the building before it’s even built.
This technology removes uncertainty and indecisiveness that is typical on most projects. Upon completion of a project, we hear clients comment, “if we knew this is what it was going to look like, we would have made changes.” This will not continue for clients engaging this tool that is currently in use in nearly every other industry. Full-Scale Analysis Simulators remove uncertainties from all Stakeholders, dramatically improve communications and expectations ultimately driving overall team satisfaction and design innovation.
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| The six-sided cave can accommodate multiple participants at the same time. |
Insight
It has been rewarding, exciting and unexpected to see how this technology engages all stakeholders. These fully immersive, collaborative environments immediately level the playing field between experienced designers and their non-architectural clients. The team’s communication is direct, efficient and to the point allowing for more confident and accurate decision making. The sweet spot regarding the usage of this technology is in Schematic Design, the most indecisive and least profitable segment of the workflow.
Technical Advances
The systems hardware continues to evolve thus allowing for larger data sets to be handled real time. For example, the resolution of the system at Iowa State allows analysis of data almost 20/20. I don’t see these environments getting any cheaper, just more powerful.
Interesting Uses
We experience a couple of things on recent client visits that were quite impressive. We had a $150 mil hospital project that was being analyzed in schematic design to include the architects, engineers and approximately 30 of the hospital’s department heads as well as their president. They gave feedback regarding corridor flow of a particular wing of the hospital. The architects were amazed by this since this is so atypical during this stage of design. We had a $2 mil vet clinic project where the owners were not satisfied with people and animal flow so they modified the reception area immediately saving $15,000 in change orders, and their usage of the system at Duke cost the team just $900!
Low Cost Option
It was critical that we made this tool affordable to the industry. Our intent was to implement a tool that could be used through all stages of design. The cost of usage is solely based on file size, number of files and time needed on the system. Budgeting $1500-$2000 per hour will cover most projects.
