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Today, you can digitally model anything with lifelike realism – test it, try it, optimize it – all before it exists physically. From sitting in a virtual car to planning traffic flows, from choreographing maintenance operations to digitally reconstructing an archaeological treasure, digital online 3D PLM will transform consumers into consum-actors – and the virtual world into a Lifelike Experience.
Until recently, Dr. Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, only dreamed of having a coherent overview of Egypt’s Giza Plateau, home to the Great Pyramids. With many of its artifacts dispersed to museums around the world, reconstructing the site physically was impossible. But what if it were feasible to create a fully immersive, real-time 3D model that digitally reassembled not only the artifacts, but all of the associated data from decades of digs?
“Imagine being able to go anywhere, above ground or below, to enter a decorated tomb chapel, or descend down a burial shaft to view a sarcophagus,” Dr. Manuelian mused – all with scientific accuracy.
The 3D Giza International Collaboration, a partnership of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Dassault Systèmes, will start bringing Dr. Manuelian’s dream to life in fully immersive, real-time 3D in early 2011. Beginning with a selection of tombs, the ceramics and statues will be digitally returned to their original locations of almost 5,000 years ago.
Lifelike Experience is natural and easy to use, bringing simplicity that allows each of us to better understand the decisions that affect our lives and to positively influence them.
The wall reliefs, paintings, and inscriptions will be digitally “transported” back to their original positions, making it possible for researchers to study them in relation to one another for the very first time. And who will be among the first to experience this virtual world? Dr. Manuelian’s archaeology students at Harvard, beginning with classes in the 2011 spring semester.
The Giza project is a sweeping example of Lifelike Experience in the age of PLM 2.0, as enabled by Dassault Systèmes Version 6 PLM and Social Innovation solutions. One of the most ambitious digital archaeology projects ever conceived, it leverages a 3D approach to visualizing what no longer exists – or has yet to be invented – that has the potential to transform each of us from disconnected citizens and consumers into actors with a role in designing the world we live in and the products we use.
Transforming consumers into consum-actors
Virtual Lifelike Experience, available online in real time, is transforming consumers from passive receivers of products into consum-actors: members of online communities that contribute to the process of creating, testing and perfecting the things that touch and contribute to our lives through a process known as crowdsourcing.
Thanks to new levels of Social Innovation enabled by 3DSwYm, Dassault Systèmes’ next-generation PLM 2.0 community platform, we’ll participate in lifelike urban planning that will allow us to help design the cities in which we live. We will buy customized products that delight us because we’ve played a role in getting them right, eliminating the 80% of product launches that fail because they don’t meet customer needs or are late to market. Lifelike Experience is also about connecting the world of simulation with the design world. From virtually testing how a newly proposed traffic pattern might affect your daily commute to walking virtually through a model of the house you plan to build, Lifelike Experience is natural and easy to use, bringing simplicity that allows each of us to better understand the decisions that affect our lives and to positively influence them.
Online, immersive 3D… everywhere
From our smartphones, computers or iPads, each of us will have access, in both our personal and professional lives, to powerful search applications based on DS-Exalead technology. These applications will allow us to intuitively retrieve any kind of information from anywhere, assemble it in a coherent manner, and render it in a realistic 3D environment. In this way, Lifelike Experience will empower each of us to immediately see the results of our decisions, and optimize those decisions before anything is built in the physical world.
Lifelike Experience also gives product companies more meaningful information that ever before. They are beginning to brainstorm online in 3D, removing the creativity limits once imposed by tools that operated in silos. They are no longer limited to exploring the mechanical design of product, but can virtually “test drive” all of the associated systems, from electronics to hydraulics, to experience just how they will work in reality. They can plan the maintenance of large facilities – such as offshore oil rigs or nuclear power plants – to minimize costs, train workers and improve safety. And because they can connect with everyone – from colleagues to suppliers and consumers – through an online collaborative platform, they can be more creative and agile in meeting market demands.
Version 6: The solutions that make virtual experience lifelike
The Version 6 products portfolio it is evolving every day to make Lifelike Experience increasingly intuitive and easy. SolidWorks, CATIA, SIMULIA and DELMIA create the data that drives Lifelike Experience. ENOVIA provides the backbone to organize all of this data into information with context and meaning. And 3DVIA is the environment-builder that turns data into Lifelike Experience. Together, they open the door to the world we imagine. On the pages that follow, discover how some of the world’s most innovative companies are leveraging that power.
