VR/AR

Airbus: Catia Viewer

The Catia Viewer was developed by Plain Concepts for Airbus. It presents a new way of viewing 3D models by using current technologies such as Virtual Reality and Wave Engine..

Catia Viewer is an application based on Virtual Reality for the Oculus Rift device. It can simulate one or several working environments on a specific task, allowing a very natural manipulation based on different controls. Thus the operator has virtual hands to both disassemble parts and adapt the workspace size in order to visualize the real parts of an aircraft in detail.

CLIENT
Airbus
Industry
Manufacturing
Services
Virtual Reality
Technology
Wave Engine
Plain Concepts also developed a loader that could import models from CATIA and SolidWorks based on STP and IGS formats. These formats are vectorial and define parts with infinite accuracy. Therefore we developed a system to adapt each part’s resolution in triangles according to their distance to make them visible at a suitable frame rate in a Virtual Reality headset
01

Challenge

Training new workers in the aerospace sector is crucial as the slightest assembly failure can pose a great risk. This is why Airbus has always worked with workbenches. However, these are expensive and wear out continuously. Besides this system requires an instructor per worker reducing the number of new recruits.
02

Results

This application eliminates the wear out of real parts, reduces costs and minimizes the space needed to have more work scenarios in the same manufacturing plant.
In addition, instructors will be able to teach from a different location, even virtually and rate the work done on the test bench by the trainee.
03

Highlights

Thanks to the development and use of Virtual Reality, this project reduces the cost of manufacturing airplane parts or heavy machinery. We no longer need to perform multiple impressions since parts can now be virtually prototyped.

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