Immersive Cable Routing: Combining Expertise and Virtual Reality
There have been many studies on the benefits of immersive cable routing compared to using algorithms for calculating cable and pipe pathways. While CAD routing modules play a significant role in this process, the combination of engineering expertise and immersive virtual reality (VR) can solve cabling challenges faster and help reduce overall design time, particularly when sandboxing ideas in the early stages.
For this project, I explored implementing a cable routing system using Visionary Render’s standard features. The cable router was developed as a Gallery object that can be dropped into any scene. When users switch to their HMD, the GUI attaches to their hand controller, allowing them to immediately begin routing cables. While this could be further enhanced as a plugin, I wanted to demonstrate a different approach—building it as a Gallery object to showcase how easily content can be created and reused within Visionary Render.
Simplified Cable Routing in Visionary Render
Once you’ve added the Gallery object to your scene, the process is simple: select the cable colour, define the radius, and begin drawing. The cables can be drawn freely in open space or on the surfaces of CAD models and point cloud scans from real-world objects.
Upon completion, cables can be attached to their connection points, enabling them to move with the connected object. This allows cabling to be introduced earlier in the design process, which is often delayed in CAD workflows due to continuous design modifications. Although this system doesn't automatically adjust or reroute cables, it enables quick refinements, helping to visualise cable runs and measure the required cable length.
Exporting Cable Paths to CAD
The last part of the GUI includes a simple OBJ export feature, allowing users to export the cable path back into CAD software. This helps finalise cable runs within the CAD environment.
Customisation and Flexibility
The scripting within Visionary Render is fully accessible, giving users the flexibility to modify functionality, change export formats, or even link the cable routing system to a BOM (Bill of Materials). This feature allows designers to assess the cost implications of their routing decisions. While this isn’t a fully functional routing system, it offers a quicker way to experiment with cable designs in conjunction with engineers' expertise and natural intuition for visualising paths.
Blending Immersive Design and CAD Routing
In truth, the ideal solution might be a combination of immersive VR and CAD routing modules. Using immersive technology for sandboxing ideas, followed by CAD modules to refine the path based on constraints, provides the best of both worlds. Whether you opt for one method or both, this project presented an interesting challenge for me, and I hope this tool proves helpful in design reviews.
The Gallery object is available as-is and could certainly benefit from improvements by more skilled coders. If you'd like to try it out, you can download it from our Virtalis GitHub repository.