Cutting Edge

While Jeremy was at the Green BIM conference, I attended the annual Bentley conference, BE Community Live with two other Tocci modelers, Sam Stuart and Courtney Pagani. Although we all have pages of notes, lots of ideas and lots of things to test, we were most excited by one corner of the exhibit hall: Future Technology.

Bentley does a lot of amazing R&D, but we were especially excited about what they are doing with QR codes. I think they are sending out some videos, but in the meantime my horrible cell phone pictures and brief text will have to suffice.















QR codes are driving model navigation. The laptop's camera is synchronized to the model, so that as the laptop moves in space (rotates, moves back or forward) it registers to the QR codes and navigates through the model.





















Here QR codes on a 2D plan help overlay a model in the camera view on the handheld device.

One thing that I didn't get a great picture of was the integration of all of this into an iPad, using its internal GPS. The model was navigating merely by moving forward, backward, etc. That technology combined with location-based navigation will be very powerful in the field.