As BIM software has greatly improved over the last few years, there is not much change on the interface side. Since the beginning of the concept of BIM, we have not much improve the way we are designing on our favorite CAD application. The development of powerful touch-screens has totally changed our personal devices (mobile phones and personal computers), but I haven’t seen any professional design application using them successfully.
Anyway, some new devices seem to be interesting as new way of interacting with a 3D model.
The SMART Board presents itself as a flat screen, and uses a camera on top of it to change it into a giant touch screen. Some demonstration using Navisworks shown a very impressive way for reviewing and annotating a 3D model.
Some pretty cool videos make me think I am not the only one to believe in cameras and other Kinect to change our way of designing 3D models. As an example, you can have a look on the Scott Penman’s page on the Grasshopper forum. He presents how he uses a webcam to create and control a Rhino model through Grasshopper.
One of my biggest hope in this field is the Leap Motion, a new device including some VGA camera sensors and a “little” piece of software to create a $70 gesture control system that will make the Kinect look like an outdated piece of technology.
The presentation video features an incredibly precise motion detector, which can “see” the individual position of each of your fingers in a three cubic feet workspace.
Possibilities for this kind of devices are almost endless, especially in any 3D models related domain. I already imagine myself casually sculpting a whole building with just a few intuitive hand movements.
These kind of devices may be the next step for integrating BIM in the AEC industry, when modeling a building will become as easy and intuitive as a few pen strokes on a drawing table. And make me dream of a new desktop.
