Shared immersive environments for parametric model manipulation: Evaluating a workflow for parametric model manipulation from within immersive virtual environments

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide designers with new visual mediums through which to communicate their designs. There is great potential for these mediums to positively augment current visual communication methods by improving remote collaboration. Enabling designers to interact with familiar computational tools through external virtual interfaces would allow them to both calibrate design parameters and visualise parametric outcomes from within the same immersive virtual environment. The current research outlines a workflow for parametric manipulation and mesh replication between immersive applications developed in the Unity game engine and McNeel's Grasshopper plugin. This paper serves as a foundation for future research into integrating design tools with external VR and AR applications in an effort of enhancing remote collaborative designs.