CAD-VR Integration as a Tool for Industrial Assembly Processes Validation: A Practical Application

Abstract

Assembly planning and evaluation are important phases of the product development process. The generation of assembly plans is often a lengthy and costly manual process with a direct impact on the time to market. Many attempts to improve this process through the adoption of Virtual Reality have been done in the last twenty years, however the adoption of these approaches in real industrial environments is still immature and not well documented in the available literature. This paper aims at evaluating, through the adoption of a case study research approach, the real benefits coming from the adoption of Virtual Assembly strategies in an industrial company operating in the Oil & Gas sector.