Developing a Virtual Reality tool for architects

Johan HanegraafTechnology5 Comments

Archispace is a Virtual Reality modeling application that I am building for architects and urban designers. This preview shows how it can be used to study and communicate on top of existing architectural 3D models. The projects you see here are designed and modeled in Revit at Mecanoo. The tool now supports loading of .FBX and .OBJ files using a file preparation script in 3ds max. I’m planning to automate conversion and linking of Revit files via a Revit plugin so models can be directly loaded and exported from and to Virtual Reality.

The application is still in early development and was built using the Unity3d, Revit, 3ds max, C# coding and opensource frameworks. Feel free to contact me if you like to support the development, or share your ideas on modeling or design studies in Virtual Reality. I might be able to add those into the beta release of this tool!

Keep an eye on my blog for updates about the release and developments or visit www.mecanoo.nl to learn about mecanoo’s work and how we use Virtual Reality to enhance our designs.

5 Comments on “Developing a Virtual Reality tool for architects”

  1. This is very cool! I like the multiple options of sketching 2D and 3D, as well as the scaling options.

    1. Hi Steve, thanks you for your interest of previewing the app for your site. I’m still working on a stable alpha built, but I will share developments, functionality and the tools official name here, so keep an eye on my website if you like to test/preview a beta release!

    1. Hey Frank,
      I developed this tool in Unity3d and coded in C#, all the models in the preview are coming from Revit and 3ds Max. As you can see my initial experiments with Virtual Reality got a bit out of hand over the past year but I really enjoy building this! Lets try to schedule a meeting in Rotterdam so we can share some of our VR/Archviz ideas!

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