BIM and Virtual Reality (VR) at the construction site

Abstract

In Scandinavia, recent years have seen an increased effort to move away from traditional 2D-drawings at the construction site, and instead let site personnel extract necessary information directly from the Building Information Model (BIM). However, although BIM-viewers and mobile applications are constantly improving, there are still issues around user-friendliness and ability to extract information and correct measurements directly from the model. In order to improve on the current situation, this paper presents a VR-application that allows construction workers to interact with the BIM through a user-friendly interface. By using modern VR hardware, such as HTC Vive, they can enter and freely navigate, inspect, and interact with the BIM in scale 1:1 and extract information, take measurements, define section planes, and control visibility of individual components or sub-models. A core component in this interface is the concept of “3D-labels”, which let the user easily place and arrange information and measurements as needed. From within the VR environment it is then possible to take snapshots that can be uploaded and accessed on portable units on the construction site. In addition to present technical details of the developed VR-system, we also present an evaluation of it performed at four different construction sites.