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Gravity sketch aims to bring 3D sketching to the masses
Gravity Sketch is a virtual reality 3D design tool that is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. BIM+ spoke to Oluwaseyi Sosanya, co-founder of Gravity Sketch, to find out more about the sketching tool’s potential.
How could Gravity Sketch help design and construction professionals?
Gravity Sketch is really a tool for communication. In the construction industry there are several teams working on the same project. They may all be working in 3D yet the means of communication between all the teams is through 2D. This is because for thousands of years man has communicated 3D ideas in 2D and to this day we have yet to perfect that workflow.
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Whenever you represent 3D content in 2D you lose some information, which you try to compensate for with notation. With Gravity Sketch you can have multiple users in the same environment on different devices in different parts of the globe working on the same model in 3D. This is the real key benefit for this industry.
An important but less powerful feature is our import function that lets users upload models into Gravity Sketch and manipulate them or simply make clear notations for the next team to pick up on.
Could you elaborate on how it would benefit CAD users?
For traditional CAD users there are two key workflows we have identified. The first is from concept to formalisation – the designer or engineer can hash out rough ideas in Gravity Sketch then take that data and import it into AutoCAD for refinement and further development.
The second is communication and visualisation. CAD users can export their models and import them into Gravity Sketch. In the software they can then invite their team to come and review ideas in one-to-one scale. Using the Gravity Sketch stroke tool users can annotate within the VR environment and and share ideas in 3D rather than a team of four huddling behind a computer screen.
What do you see in the future concerning VR and design and architecture?
VR has been around for a few decades now with origins in stereoscopic viewers. From the beginning we have always been trying to experience something that exists in 3D in the comfort of our close surroundings. Now that the technology has finally come down in size and increased in computational power we can bring to life ideas that have never existed. This is what architects do best.
I feel that there will be a revolution in architecture as a craft with much more of the human touch coming back to the workflow and technology empowering that human trace exponentially. We are 100% dedicated to bringing powerful and intuitive tools to VR which will allow creatives to push the boundaries of their ideas and bring to life some truly unique creations.
What is holding VR back?
The main thing we want to bring across in our work is a very focused development on the user experience with respect to productivity in design-related fields, we believe this is something the industry is not addressing as it may be just a bit early with most of the consumers of VR devices being in gaming and entertainment.
With such a potential to change the way we create, it seems a shame not to try to exploit this technology to benefit the people who are responsible for bringing to life the 3D world that surrounds us as well as giving opportunity to a whole new class of designers and engineers.
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