Matthew Traum of Design News has an interesting article on how the virtual world of Second Life may dramatically impact new product development and engineering design. Excerpts: “First there was the drafting table and the pencil. Then there was 2-D CAD; next came 3-D drafting utilities like SolidWorks and ProEngineer. Now, San Francisco-based Linden Lab has evolved computer-aided design to its next plateau, offering free access to a computer-generated alternative universe called Second Life (SL) where users can build anything. Ironically, the SL developers did not intend to design a solid modeling tool. SL was just another massive multiplayer online experience until users spontaneously began utilizing it for engineering design.
“It as serious development tool,” says Assistant Professor Chang Liu (a.k.a. Chang Tuxing in SL) of the Virtual Immersive Technologies and Arts for Learning (VITAL) Lab. at Ohio University. “Second Life is just emerging into the mainstream and a lot of engineers are not there yet,” says Pam Broviak, PE, (a.k.a. Pam Renoir in SL) public works director and city engineer for La Salle, IL. “When I show engineers Second Life, their initial reaction is ‘it is just a game’ because it looks like a game. They have to get beyond that.”…..
Using her SL identity, “Pam Renoir,” Broviak manages the Second Life Public Works Resource Center, one of the first destinations in the metaverse focused on applying SL to real-world engineering. The Center serves as a clearing house for information related to engineering and public works in SL. Broviak has also been using SL in her engineering practice to design plumbing systems. …..Unlike real world piping, Broviak’s plumbing system now exists in cyber space, where it can be used as a kind of 3-D wiki. Engineers, plumbers and homeowners can use Broviak’s design as a template, modifying it for their own applications. Broviak imagines that eventually an entire 3-D library of plumbing solutions could be accessible to engineers visiting Second Life….. “What takes it further than conventional 3-D drafting tools is the level of interaction,” Broviak says. “Once you build something, you can pick it up or walk through it; its immersive, like the object is really there. You can’t do that with CAD.”
Ohio University has used SL to create a complete virtual engineering college, including a building slated for future construction. At this SL campus, engineering and computer science courses are taught in parallel with real-world counterparts. “One of our buildings won’t exist for another year, but my students already had a class in it,” Liu says. “First we tried to replicate buildings exactly, but then we learned it was better to modify them from the original to make them more functional in Second Life.”
For now, Broviak and Liu are engineering pioneers within SL; among the first to embrace this immersive alternate reality as a serious tool for real-world engineering design. Nonetheless, they share a vision for how SL may soon be used once its capabilities and scope are discovered and exploited by engineers.
“I see Second Life being used as the first step in the planning process for many future engineering design projects,” Broviak says. “Building something in there does not take a lot of time. Companies will soon discover that much of their initial design work can be accomplished in-world where everyone has a chance to use it and comment on it before anything is actually built.”
Broviak also foresees manufacturers and suppliers setting up virtual storefronts in SL where engineers can browse and specify parts for their projects. Potential buyers will interact with 3-D computer-generated components instead of thumbing through a 2-D catalogue or Web browser. Companies could even build large versions of their products embedded with interactive scripts to enable customers to walk through and see how the internal components function. Liu sees SL as a pathway to reduce production cycle time and increase user input earlier in the development process.
“Normally what designers are doing is not accessible to users,” he says. “But, Second Life is different in the sense that products are built in-world, which totally changes the dynamic. Creation is no longer the work of a developer.”
Link to full article: http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article...
