{"id":4390,"date":"2016-11-30T07:39:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T15:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/?p=4390"},"modified":"2016-11-30T07:44:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T15:44:30","slug":"xpoart-automotive-virtual-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/xpoart-automotive-virtual-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"XpoArt Reinvents Automotive Showrooms with Virtual Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine you walk into a car dealer\u2019s showroom, and every fixture there\u2014 the interactive kiosks, the information stands next to each car, even the coffee machine\u2014embodies thoughtful high-end product design to enhance the shopping experience. Pretty great, huh?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now imagine that you\u2019re the owner of that dealership, and you get to see every one of those design elements in context in virtual reality (VR) before the designer ever fabricates a thing. It\u2019s like you\u2019re there<\/em>, and you know exactly what you\u2019re getting ahead of time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those immersive experiences\u2014both the finished showrooms and the VR previews of them\u2014are what XpoArt<\/a> is creating with the help of Fusion 360.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"xpoart\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Better Design for a Better Brand Experience<\/h2>\n

The design firm has been making point-of-sale systems, kiosks, and related furnishings for six years. They started out as a consulting firm focused on designing exhibit hardware for tradeshows, museums, and showrooms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Peter Baranowski, who owns and manages the company with his father, explains how they pivoted the business a few years ago. When they decided to relocate from Indiana back to Ontario, they began to focus on the automotive industry because they thought they could design better display components than the off-the-shelf products that were being sold into car dealerships.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They began pitching car companies on a better and cleaner representation of their brands in the showroom. \u201cIt’s all about creating that experience so there’s continuity,\u201d Baranowski says. The more fulfilling and contiguous you can make that experience, the better, he adds. When you do, every aspect of the dealership connects to the quality of the vehicle and service.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Along the way, XpoArt manufactured a lot of high-end glass-and-aluminum pricing stands for major vehicle brands, and began experimenting with holographic displays that enabled \u201csignage that wasn’t going to occlude the environment.\u201d Soon the firm began gaining traction with top automotive manufacturers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"xpo1\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \"xpo2\"<\/p>\n

How Virtual Reality Helps XpoArt Create Better Experiences<\/h2>\n

Baranowski is a relentless forward thinker when it comes to technology. Early in his career, he spent years developing custom software for engineering control systems before moving on to manufacturing automation, environmental system design and infrastructure, and Web-based applications. Today, his other business is a technology think tank that operates as an outsourced R&D unit for product design.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When XpoArt began using VR in their processes, he says, \u201cWe were blown away by what we could achieve from a design and ideation perspective.\u201d The team has been using Fusion 360 for about three years; today, they export 3D product designs from Fusion 360 into gaming engines such as Unity to create immersive virtual environments that help clients see what\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a gee-whiz trick: It actually helps XpoArt create and refine prototypes faster. Baranowski uses the example of a hospitality station with an espresso machine and cups in the setting of an automotive dealership. It looks great when you render it in Fusion 360, he says, but \u201cI still don’t have a sense of scale. I still don’t have a sense of how I as a user will interact with it.\u201d \"hospitalitystation\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once you integrate that model into a rich virtual environment, however, \u201cIt’s more about how that product relates to a person. Does it feel cool? Does it give you the right vibe?\u201d In VR, you can show the model in its setting, with full attention to materials such as wood, glass, and veneers. That immediately gives you a sense of the hospitality station\u2019s aesthetics and shows how it will fit in the customer lounge at the dealership. The client can interact with it in an exact VR replica of their own environment to determine if the design is a winner or needs further tweaks. Even better, the VR approach saves lots of money and time that would otherwise be spent on physical mockups.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Baranowski reports that the results have been impressive. \u201cNo customer would have said that VR is an essential experience for them,\u201d he explains, \u201cbut as soon as they experience it, they want to see how it can integrate in to their environment and marketing strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Using Fusion 360 for End-to-End Product Development<\/h2>\n

In previous jobs, Baranowski often used SolidWorks. \u201cAlthough SolidWorks is a good package,\u201d he notes, \u201cit was incredibly expensive.\u201d He \"xpo3\"knew that it was out of reach for XpoArt when it was getting started. Browsing for alternatives, he came across Fusion 360: \u201cMy jaw dropped when I realized how inexpensively it was being offered on a monthly basis, even for the premium edition.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once he dug into the software, he says, he realized that he could go from zero to \u201ceverything I wanted to do\u201d in three days. As he puts it, \u201cNot only was this product inexpensive. It is extremely intuitive.\u201d He sees Fusion 360 as \u201cenabling a whole industry\u201d of designers, engineers, and product developers who never would have had access to software so powerful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For XpoArt, the CAM side of Fusion 360 has been critically important. He and his team use the CAM preprocessor heavily, often to power their large gantry CNC machine\u2014which, Baranowski notes, they also designed in Fusion 360.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cFusion 360 is very enabling,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause it is so quick to design with, we can pivot very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

XpoArt Keeps Pushing the Envelope of Product Design<\/h2>\n

Baranowski likes Fusion 360 so much that he now serves on its customer advisory group which meets every several months to talk about industry trends, along with the next innovations they\u2019d like to see in the software itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For now, XpoArt\u2019s use of Fusion 360 in VR environments makes the firm an outlier. But Baranowski sees these \u201cvisualization engines\u201d as integral for the future of product design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how XpoArt is creating immersive experiences with the help of Fusion 360.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":894,"featured_media":5035,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","dhig-theme--light"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nXpoArt Reinvents Automotive Showrooms with Virtual Reality - Fusion Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how XpoArt is creating immersive experiences with the help of Fusion 360.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/xpoart-automotive-virtual-reality\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"XpoArt Reinvents Automotive Showrooms with Virtual Reality - 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