Today, we released InsiteVR 3.0 and we’re thrilled to announce support for BIM 360 models in virtual reality meetings.

Our integration marks the first commercially available solution that enables BIM 360 customers to host VR meetings for coordination and design review with their BIM 360 hosted data. With the BIM 360 construction management platform and InsiteVR, teams can use VR to find visual clashes, evaluate coordination issues, review complex systems, and improve general project communication across team members and disciplines.

What’s New?

Review BIM 360 hosted models with project members across Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, and normal desktops.

Link BIM 360 models to InsiteVR once and we’ll handle the rest. No more exporting before meetings — the most recent BIM 360 version will be automatically available for review.

InsiteVR speech-to-text annotations synced to BIM 360 issues for maximized impact of VR meetings in your coordination workflows.

Set It and Forget it

With the InsiteVR BIM 360 integration all a project team has to do is link their BIM 360 project to InsiteVR once and InsiteVR handles the rest. When new versions of the model are published to BIM 360 we will automatically prepare everything for your next VR meeting. This way teams can simply put on their VR headsets at the scheduled time and begin reviewing their BIM 360 model without any prep work from them. No exporting or sending files required.

Teams can continue to use BIM 360 as their single source of truth and get the benefits of using InsiteVR to discover and address more coordination and constructability issues.

The integration works with projects hosted on BIM 360 docs, BIM 360 teams (legacy) and BIM 360 Design Collaboration (published to docs).

Staying Accountable with BIM 360 Issues

One of our most popular features of 2018 was speech-to-text annotations. When teams review projects with InsiteVR they want to make sure they can keep track of what has been found, so we gave them a way to use their voice while in VR to flag issues.

Now these speech-to-text annotations can be auto-synced to BIM 360 issues so that teams can use BIM 360’s more advanced issue tracking features like due dates, labeling, assigning to team members, and more.

VR Meetings and BIM 360: A Match Made in Heaven

At the Autodesk University 2018 AEC keynote, Andy Leek of PARIC gave the audience a glimpse of our BIM 360 integration at the time. We were working on syncing InsiteVR speech-to-text annotations to BIM 360 issues so that teams could stay accountable for the issues uncovered during VR reviews.

Andy Leek at the AU 2018 AEC Keynote

As we showed more companies our upcoming integration one thing always came up: it’d be great if we didn’t have to upload our Revit/Navis model to both InsiteVR and BIM 360. Why can’t you just take the model from BIM 360 too?

As a cloud based VR solution we think a lot about how the cloud makes it easier for people to communicate. Collaboration and communication are the core of BIM 360 so it makes a lot of sense for us to expand on BIM 360 workflows. Here’s what we think makes an ideal VR communications solution for AEC:

VR so easy it’s not even there — Because of all the prep work required to use VR teams can often get discouraged from using it despite the benefits. We want to minimize the barrier to entry so that teams can join VR meetings without thinking about it to discuss what matters: the project. Data integrity — Teams should always be looking at the most up to date version of their model with as much rich information as possible. There’s no point in discussing clashes in an outdated model. Actionable results — If you join a VR meeting you should be finding and addressing issues that cost the project time and money. How can we make sure project teams keep track of issues found in VR and see real results? Avoid extra work — Whether it’s rework, exporting, sending each other files, or opening Unity, we don’t want teams to do more work because they’re using VR.

As a leader in construction management software, BIM 360 enables us to improve in each of the areas above.With Autodesk’s Forge platform we are able to pull in the data that project teams need when they need it. Making sure everyone has access to the right information is important, but we see a missing piece in how 3D data can be efficiently discussed across disciplines throughout the project life cycle. Screensharing complex 3D models should be considered a risk because of the miscommunication that can happen.

We are delivering an immersive communication layer on top of BIM 360 that will help teams deliver projects on time and on budget.

Get Started Today

If you’re an InsiteVR customer just contact our team and they will enable the integration for you. If you would like a free trial of the BIM 360 integration please request access here: https://integrations.bim360.autodesk.com/InsiteVR/InsiteVR/

Read more about everything else in our 3.0 release: http://support.insitevr.com/faq-and-announcements/announcements/whats-new-in-30

About InsiteVR

InsiteVR builds immersive communication software for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry to improve project delivery and reduce errors. InsiteVR enables AEC project teams to review their 3D models together in virtual reality to identify and resolve complex issues. Instead of waiting until construction walkthroughs to find issues, InsiteVR customers can identify and address issues months in advance while they’re still virtual and easy to update.