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RTT and the Power of Visualization

Payoff in virtual design often comes when 3D data are used downstream in everything from marketing to post-sales service.

by Jim Romeo | Published June 1, 2008

Jereon Snepvangers is the CEO of RTT USA.

RTT is a 3D visualization technology company headquartered in Munich, Germany, with several offices throughout Europe as well as in Pasadena, CA, and Royal Oak, MI. One of its key products, RTT DeltaGen, takes MCAD data and converts it into usable, photorealistic models that can be manipulated in real time. Jereon Snepvangers is the CEO of RTT USA, Inc. and heads up the office in Pasadena.

HOW IS DELTAGEN USED AND BY WHOM?
Snepvangers: RTT DeltaGen focuses on consumer products that require both high design quality as well as high customizability.

These days, most products need to have both of the above attributes. However, this raises the cost for designers, engineers, and end consumers to evaluate all variants using traditional photography.

Simply photographing a design prototype or final product in every conceivable configuration is no longer financially practical.

RTT DeltaGen uses computer-generated virtual reality (VR) to visualize prototypes and final products using the manufacturer’s 3DMCAD data. The key is that it does so at amazingly high levels of realism and in real time, which means that rather than creating a few still images or a film, it produces [animations at]more than 10 frames-per-second.

The industries that currently take the lead in this revolution are automotive and aerospace manufacturers and their agencies.

They have traditionally been the heaviest users of CAD data. They also have increasinglymore complex products to design, engineer, and sell. In the last three to five years, many consumer productsmanufacturers have begun using RTT DeltaGen.

WHAT ARE DESIGNERS MOST INTERESTED IN TO MEET THEIR NEWEST CHALLENGES?
Snepvangers: RTT DeltaGen has changed the way products are designed from the traditional physical design process to the streamlined virtual design process. The breakthrough is in its ability to address two main criteria like never before: Visual quality must be outstanding — so high [in quality] that designers can exactly replicate stitching on seats or the reflective and refractive effects of choosing one material over another.

Speed — Not only does the user demand the ability to pan, zoom, and rotate the objects in real time, but also to instantly alter colors, materials, and even alternative parts, options, and accessories. This, combined with the need to replace entire sections of the vehicle with alternative designs, used to be cumbersome due to the time computers required to recalculate the scene with every change, which sometimes took hours or even days.

CAN YOU TELL US HOW YOUR PRODUCT IS USED TO EXPEDITE COLLABORATIVE PROCESSES?
Snepvangers: RTT DeltaGen was largely responsible for helping a large transportation manufacturer avoid building a very costly and dysfunctional physical prototype — at a much faster pace than would have been possible using a competitor’s software. The customer has a number of different suppliers, meaning that for every redesign of the product, the suppliersmust redesign their components as well. The OEM’s engineers called for a reduction in the thickness of the product’s main material. In order for a door to be flush, it had to be redesigned.

The suppliers redesigned the door and sent the specifications to the OEM, indicating that they were ready to move forward with the physical prototype. When the OEM built a virtual prototype of the vehicle using RTT technology, it became apparent that if the product were to be built as designed, the door would not open sufficiently. The problemconstituted a total of 11 errors in the prototype; at a cost of $120,000 per mistake had a physical one been built.

In the apparel industry, RTT clients have found significant value in virtual prototyping. Consumer product manufacturers design dozens of products per day. In the past, designs were often sent to a low-wage country where the prototypes were built, and dozens of prototypes were then sent back to the manufacturer’s facility.

This multiple-week lag time meant that by the time designers could see their work, they had likely moved on to new concepts and directions. With the adoption of RTT’s software, there is now immediate feedback.

WHERE ARE DESIGN COMMUNITIES HEADING AND WHAT WILL THEY BE LOOKING FOR?
Snepvangers: The current wave of virtual reality in design and engineering replaces or supplements existing processes, such as physical prototyping and photography.

In the future, this will extend to new applications in design, where there is no existing solution.

Many designers are adopting virtual design that allows them to experiment with different materials in order to improve the perceived quality of the end product. One example of this is automotive interiors. RTT DeltaGen has the ability tomodify the design, such as changing out seat types or swapping leather for cloth in real time,meaning that the results of the changes can immediately be seen during a presentation with no need to schedule another meeting thanks to proprietary algorithms.

Equally, in the industrial design area of consumer products, the emphasis has been on materials as much as on the shape of the design itself. For example, note the mobile phone industry’s focus on hard versus soft, smooth versus textured, and sturdy versus light materials.

Materialsmust be sustainable in design, manufacturing, usage, and recycling. Virtual prototyping conserves valuable resources and enables OEMs to meet their sustainability goals.Meanwhile, all these products must be developed in record time ... In this mad dash, it is key to go through as many early prototypes in the shortest time as possible.

Visualization is by nature an estimation of reality, albeit with RTT a very convincingly realistic one. Simulation, in contrast, is a physically correct representation of reality.

One clear example of this is RTT Real- Trace, which produces physically correct simulations of light refracting and reflecting in real time. The key here is ‘real time.’

WHAT IS THE BIGGESTMISCONCEPTION ABOUT VIRTUAL AND COLLABORATIVE DESIGNS?
Snepvangers: That it is about software. In fact, RTT’s approach is the opposite.

It is all about changing the process of designing products and in doing so sharing and reusing digital assets (including CAD) in new ways. The software is just part of the solution. One example is: RTT DeltaGen can now visualize the digitally produced windtunnel (CFD) data onto a photorealistic vehicle in real time. Showing CFD data is already possible inmost CAD software, albeit in poor visual quality.

However, the significance here is not that RTT DeltaGen can also show it. By showing it in photorealistic quality and interactively in real time, it has changed the process of evaluating air-efficient (and hence sustainable) design.Whereas in the past, engineers who knew how to interpret poor-quality visualizations could only do such evaluation, it can now be done by top executives, designers, and engineers— all in the same room at the same time. This significantly reduces the decision times and associated costs and risks.

Anothermisconception is that 3D product visualization is about design only. In fact, RTT has been founded on the idea that the payoff in virtual design often comes when the 3D data (and associated digital assets such as visualizations, animations, and technical digital explanations) are used downstreaminmarketing, sales, servicing, parts, and after sales. All of RTT clients do this, or are in the process of adopting this model.

Finally, a bigmisconception is that realtime visualization is the same as CGI (computer generated imaging) single-image rendering.

Many OEMs compare the two in the same big swoop. This equates to saying a photo camera is the same as a video camera.

The former gives you ‘a pre-produced view’ of the product,where the latter gives you a full ‘live experience’ of the product.

With CGI image rendering, you have to wait for each angle or sequence to render. In contrast, with real-time visualization, you can truly experience a product immediately and interactively from any angle and with any option.

More Information:
RTT USA
Pasadena, CA

Jim Romeo is a freelance writer specializing in industrial technology topics. To comment on this interview, send e-mail to DE-Editors@deskeng.com.