Westinghouse Electric Company has already linked its detailed 3D model for an advanced nuclear power plant to its construction schedule using Intergraph's SmartPlant Review software, shortening the construction cycle (which greatly reduces its construction costs), ensuring the buildability of the plant as designed and using the model as an information tool for both technical and non-technical audiences.

Now, the company has progressed from reviewing the 3D and 4D (3D plus time) nuclear island on a 27-inch widescreen computer monitor to using several different immersive technologies. We have the capability in-house to project the model - 3D and 4D - in stereo video.
It turns out that it is a relatively easy thing to do, if you have a 3Dlabs Wildcat graphics card and about US$30000. We purchased a low-end yet very usable off site portable projector system, and we have used the system for presentations. We have had audiences of more than 100 people using this technique simultaneously.
We also use a much less expensive method of viewing the model in stereo for audiences of four or less - US$50 shutter glasses and a monitor capable of handling at least 100Hz (plus the Wildcat graphics card). These methods all use native SmartPlant Review, so there is no additional software to learn or models to export - just flip the switch on stereo display within SmartPlant Review, and it is there immediately. But what turns heads is the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, or CAVE.
Westinghouse Electric Co partnered with Penn State University and several other organisations to test the suitability of immersive projection display (IPD) technology, such as the CAVE, to design future nuclear power plants. The Nuclear Energy Research Institute (NERI) funded a project to see if this type of information technology could help improve arrangements and reduce both construction and maintenance costs as has been done using full-scale mock-ups.
The CAVE is a five-sided (four walls and a floor) room, 10feetby10feetby9feet. It is connected to an array of computers that control and coordinate projections onto the five surfaces to 'immerse' people within the room in a virtual space.
The system operates by using large high-resolution back-projection systems. These project computer-generated images onto the backside of the walls. Using specialised software, the images appear to be continuous from one wall to the next, and the effects of the room corners all but disappear.
A stereoscopic image is created using active viewing glasses that are in sync with the images. The system may be used to render in full or reduced size, or to enlarge almost any type of object in full stereoscopic view. With suitable tools, one may move through a virtual environment.

Discovering design problems early

This full-scale virtual mockup was used for several purposes. Firstly, our designers reviewed it by doing a walkthrough, looking for any errors or inconsistencies. The full-scale immersive 3D effect was definitely beneficial, as a few items were almost immediately spotted and marked for modification.
One specific item was the weld location for a pipe. In the original design, there was not enough space to weld fully around the pipe. The immersive 3D environment made it easy to check for this and to determine a new weld point without any such problems.
Our .dgn files are mostly separated by construction activity for this room. Thus Penn State researchers were able to mimic SmartPlant Review's 4D construction module by turning on and off model files. They were also able to review the installation paths of the various modules for interferences and collisions.
One of the interesting results from this project was that neophytes were able to perform meaningful schedule optimisation work in mere hours. Several groups of construction management students, with a construction industry expert, reviewed the room and the schedule to look for an optimal construction schedule, with various constraints. By using the CAVE, the students were able to reduce the schedule for this room by about 30percent. What is amazing about this is that these teams did this in one day's time.
With traditional methods, it would take more than a day to simply get all of the various diagrams and drawings organised, and the team would probably still not have a firm idea of how it would look in reality. By using the immersive reality technology, people transcend the mundane, yet necessary, tasks of visualising in their heads and move to the real meat of the problem - in this case, tightening the schedule while ensuring buildability.
Yet another use of this virtual mock-up has been maintenance studies. A Penn State researcher created a real-time dosimeter simulation that works with the room. A user puts on virtual reality gloves and some other locating devices. Based on where the person is virtually in the room, the dosimeter gives different readings.
While the CAVE is an expensive technology, it has the ability to bring about large positive impacts to a project in virtually any stage of development. Some universities with CAVEs may rent time in them to outside companies.

Jill Clelland is the advanced plant information lead for passive plant development at Westinghouse Electric Co, in Monroeville, Pennsylvania USA. Visit ppm.intergraph.com; www.westinghouse.com