Halocline & Tech Soft 3D

The Challenge

Manufacturing companies are under constant pressure to optimize production layouts, improve ergonomics, and adapt quickly to change. Yet in many organizations, valuable 3D CAD data remains locked in expert systems, far removed from the people who need to use it on the shop floor.

The Halocline team saw a clear opportunity: bridge this gap by making CAD data instantly usable in immersive, intuitive VR environments. The challenge? Enable production planners, engineers, and operators to load, understand, and work with complex data – without needing CAD expertise.

Halocline makes it easy to import and work with a wide range of data formats – from DWG to CAD files to point clouds. This allows teams to reuse existing assets instead of starting from scratch, enabling faster iterations, better collaboration, and more efficient planning from day one.

Fast, Reliable 3D CAD Data Access

To support a broad cross-section of the industrial market, Halocline knew that it would need its flagship applications to work with as wide a range of data as possible.

“We have so many different companies that we work with, from small engineering departments at startups, to huge, well established automobile manufacturers,” said Schlarmann. “They’re all using different CAD systems and working with different file formats. How do we enable a seamless workflow for all of them?” HOOPS Exchange – the fastest and most accurate CAD data translation toolkit – represented an ideal solution for Halocline.

HOOPS Exchange includes all the integration tools a development team requires to easily build robust CAD data translation into an application, delivering a wide range of 3D data types in all major CAD and 3D formats. Crucially, HOOPS Exchange provides access to a broad range of data including boundary representation (BREP), product manufacturing information (PMI), model tree, views, persistent IDs, styles, construction geometry, visualization and more.

“It’s important to us to have access to that high level of detail, but to also be able to reduce the complexity of the model for optimal VR performance,” explained Schlarmann. “For planning the shop floor, we can abstract the information by turning complicated objects into boxes –that’s one of the ways we’re able to maintain great framerates of 90 frames per second. When it comes to assembly of an actual product, though, access to that detailed level of information is important to see how one part is connected to another during the assembly process – and HOOPS Exchange ensures that information is fully available when it’s needed.”

By relying on the HOOPS Exchange software development kit, Halocline is able to devote the majority of its time towards developing solutions that help manufacturers to efficiently integrate Virtual Reality into their operations.

“Our core business is designing great VR applications and great user interfaces that help optimize production processes involving people and machines,” said Schlarmann. “Importing CAD files is not our core business – and that’s why we rely on strong partners like Tech Soft 3D.”

Industry:

Production Planning and Manufacturing

Challenge:

Support customer base that is using wide range of CAD systems and CAD file formats - Provide fast and accurate loading of data to visualization hardware - Deliver access to detailed model information while ensuring high frame rate performance

Solutions:

HOOPS Exchange, the leading CAD data translation toolkit

Results:

Ensure support for standard file formats and native CAD data from leading engineering software packages - Enable optimal VR performance through ability to view a simplified model or access high levels of detail as needed - Focus on core competencies, allowing resources to be devoted towards competitive differentiators like intuitive user interfaces - Carve out marketplace position by supporting innovative new VR workflows that give customers new ways to streamline their processes