Using full scale electronic mock-ups to improve design

I recently spoke to Dave Fuller of FullCon Solutions, whose company provides services to designers in various industries who can benefit from full-scale electronic mock-ups of their designs. Yacht design is an obvious application for this technology, and the following images show designer Ward Setzer visualizing his design in The Duke immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE) at Duke University in North Carolina.

This is an excellent example of extracting value from a 3D model, which was the subject of a seminar given by Bruce Hays at the recent IBEX tradeshow in Louisville, Kentucky on September 29th. While building 3D models has a cost, there is tremendous value to be captured by leveraging the model for design review, manufacturing, weight estimating, cost estimating, structural analysis, 3D printed mock-ups, rendering, outsourcing of components as small as canvas and as large as interiors, fitting new parts to existing models, performance analysis, etc.