Thinking About Building or Remodeling? Use Mixed Reality to Save Time, Money

Remodeling and construction are in most people's lives at some point. Whether you want to update your kitchen, need new fixtures for your bathroom, are moving into a new office space, or are opening the restaurant or retail store of your dreams. The list goes on, and all of these involve lots of time and money spent on design and construction. 

If you've ever embarked on anything construction related you know it's usually more money, time, and headaches than you budget for. I know from experience with a small commercial building I did with my dad, to my brother's self contracted warehouse space, to a simple deck in our Bellevue, WA backyard my dad built. 

Enter mixed reality (MR), and many design and construction issues are resolved! Synonymous with augmented realty- mixed realty is when the environment is the actual one you're in, and your viewer overlays fabricated images and objects. DIRRT, a publicly traded Canadian manufacturer of sustainable customized interiors, debuted their MR design technology, ICEreality, this past week, at the annual construction 
show, NeoCon. Here are a few problems their technology solves: 

Design Problems
Working with the designer is time consuming and we have to go back and forth several times before we agree on all aspects. Even then, I'm heavily reliant on the designer's suggestions and usually the reputable designers are very, very pricey.  

MR Solution: You can see actual objects inserted into the actual space you are constructing in/on, in real time You can change a drywall to a glass wall and see what it looks like instantly. You can play on your own, or have a designer do it for you, or both.(PLEASE watch video above starting at 01:19 to view the glory of this description). 

Construction Management Problems
When doing DIY construction, many times too many or too little materials are purchased, resulting in waste or an additional trip (i.e. cost) to the store. If you hired a contractor, sometimes, there is an issue of trust with the contractor in materials procurement- i.e. do you really need a truckload of cement? (another bonus- you can make that small design change, see what it looks like in a matter of seconds, and it might save you thousands of dollars!) 

MR Solution: Exact measurements with materials to match in place before anything is built. A transparent itemized list of things can be made, so you can see where every piece goes, down to where the tiles and nails are (ok, I made this second sentence up, it's just a guess at something I think will be easily possible with this technology). Please watch at 06:40 of the video to see what I'm referencing. 

Real Estate Sales Problems 
It's so competitive. Everywhere you look there are cranes in cities all over the world, many of these constructing residential, commercial, and office buildings that need to be leased or sold, locally and internationally. 
MR Solution: For all three types of real estate, MR lets them fill and design the space before (or after) it's built. Staging companies- those that fully furnish homes for the purpose of selling are popular in the US, and now this can be done via MR without the need for heavy lifting! 

Last word. 
With MR you can now more easily design, plan, build, furnish, and sell whatever real estate project you're working on. No need for anyone to worry about losing jobs, I doubt this will replace any human, but if you want to be ahead of the curve, best in class, or gain more international clientele, it would be a wise choice to get on this technology as early as you can. 


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