Construction and design apps review for Hololens

Look from a someone inside the market about the situation we’re in.

In the past, investors or buyers interested in purchasing a property off-plan relied on an artist’s rendering or perhaps a promotional video to get an idea of the finished product. But today with a device such as the HoloLens we can allow architects, engineers and construction workers, as well as potential buyers, to gain a greater understanding of the architect’s designs.

Since its launch in January 2016, Microsoft Hololens has proved itself to be a serious game changer. It extends far beyond the world of gaming and AR experiences, as it has proved its worth in an AECO. One of the main features of Hololens is that you could overlay a 3D model of a project over a construction site, showing your crew where doors, walls, pipes, etc will be.

Today you can start working with Augmented Reality by few simple steps:
1. Buy Hololens and a license for a suitable app
2. Export your model in fbx and upload it to Hololens
3. Start presenting your solutions and looking for the collision on your construction site.

This is although an ideal situation, but Hololens is a fully mobile device(no need in any wires or supercomputers) and in most cases exporting in fbx doesn’t automagically result in a good experience once uploaded into Hololens: they will often be unnecessarily detailed or just look ugly. The detail problem comes from, i.e. things like screw threads: if these have been modeled accurately (like they are in Revit), they’ll result in thousands upon thousands of unwanted polygons which will impact both the size of the application and its runtime performance.

(A little about polygons: A polygon mesh is a collection of vertices, edges, and faces that defines the shape of a polyhedral object in 3D computer graphics and solid modeling.)

So most of the time your models will need to be optimized, like this:

As you see we optimized it more than 25x and it still looks great and you almost can’t see the difference. It took like 5 minutes of 3D designer’s time using some Autodesk Maya plug-ins.

There is no project in AECO where you don’t find a mistake. It can be errors, omissions, changes of orders, an ineffective collaboration that can be between different department in one company. As you see often a 3D model becomes a 2d print losing many valuable data. The 3D models can, with the use of Hololens, be easily manipulated and viewed through mixed-reality, boosting efficiency in some of the most previously time- and labor-intensive tasks, from construction control to interior design.

Let’s look at some examples:

Reducing number of errors. Currently, inspections of structures are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and susceptible to human error. Visual inspections and the writing of reports and filling in forms are hard work, as the worker must extract information from a series of different drawings and databases. With augmented reality, however, they will be able to see all the physical and digital information visually, allowing them to cross-reference, report and check all aspects much quicker.

2. Optimizing your time. Another way of routine inspections of buildings is when structural engineers are sent out directly to the site. But in the near future (3–4 months), you’ll be able to give your workers a pair of Hololens and just sit in your office while they scan the site and give an app enough data to make you a detailed report about all the collisions and damages.

3. Does it fit there? Also interesting scenario to use augmented reality is that it can help judging whether heavy machinery will fit in a given room or not.

4. Save time with your clients. You can use it in interior design when your client doesn’t understand volumes of his future home and can’t imagine why this color would not go well, and why wouldn’t that lovely couch fit it. You just need a 3D model that you already prepaired, then put Hololenses on your client and allow him to change windows, colors, arrange his furniture and they’ll see in action will it fit or not and will their child hit something while running.

5. Ease up on the documentation. Another way to use it — maintenance. You can throw away your plans once you uploaded 3d models of the site. You’ll have all hidden pipes and wires exactly where they were built with no need to open every panel ceiling looking for that switch. And of course instructions to every other equipment so your workers wouldn’t mess anything up.

6. Don’t guees just see how much space it’ll take. You use Hololens to place a building in the field to see how much space it overtakes.

However, it is still early days, with a lot of work still to be done before mass implementation within AECO industries and I can’t say that Hololens with any app on board will prevent all mistakes, but in any case it can dramatically reduce much of the problems, causing more effective work for you and as a result increasing your profits.

Now let’s move to the apps that are on the market. For more convenience, let’s assume that there 6 main reasons to use augmented reality (Comparison of 3D model with the real site, Interior design, Deadline controlling, Collaboration mode, Implementation in the workflow, Pricing):

SketchUp — sketchup.com
1. Comparison — Yes. you can’t collate your sketchup model to the real room.
2. Interior design — No. you can’t add and move furniture or change colors.
3. Deadline controlling — No.
4. Collaboration — Yes.
5. Implementation— Very easy, if you’re working with SketchUp, and it’ll be quiet a journey if you use any other app.
6. Pricing — starting at $1499 with discounts for students. Have

Holoview —bimholoview.com
1. Comparison — Yes
2. Interior design — Yes, but only changing some colors.
3. Deadline controlling — No
4. Collaboration — No
5. Implementation — It has a plugin for Revit and Navisworks.
6. Pricing — Subscription system. For individuals $195 a month, for business $695 a month

HoloLive3D —visualive3d.com
1. Comparison — Yes
2. Interior design — No
3. Deadline controlling — No
4. Collaboration — No
5. Implementation — It has a plugin for Revit and Navisworks, also a web interface where you can upload your FBX files.
6. Pricing — starting at $1499

Vyzn — vyzn.io
1. Comparison — No.
2. Interior design — No.
3. Deadline controlling — No.
4. Collaboration — Yes.
5. Implementation — Yes, it has a web interface where you can upload your FBX files. Usable only for presentation purposes.
6. Pricing — unknown, just released a beta-version

MR Builder — mrbuilder.pro
1. Comparison — Yes.
2. Interior design — Yes, only use built-in models of furniture or add yours.
3. Deadline controlling— Yes.
4. Collaboration — Yes.
5. Implementation — Plugin for 3dsMax. It has a PC app where you can upload your FBX files
6. Pricing — $1000 with additional discounts for everyone.

So if you like this review and want to know more about each of this apps (we tested them all) like and share this post.