Virtalis StereoWorks designs and installs Immersive Visualisation System for CNH in Italy

VIRTALIS has designed and installed an immersive visualisation suite at Case New Holland (CNH) in Modena, Italy. This installation follows ones at Burr Ridge, near Chicago and New Holland, Pennsylvania. CNH is a leading agricultural and construction equipment Company and part of the Fiat Group. Virtalis has installed several projection and immersive systems at Elasis, the research organisation of the Fiat Group, over the past decade.

Riccardo Spadoni is responsible for virtual integration of harvesting vehicles worldwide and for tractors in Europe. “We design and manufacture numerous different platforms and products, with the different regions specialising in different machines and becoming business centres for those vehicles. We are now rolling out the same VR technology across our sites in Europe and America so that we can carry out international design reviews. We are very happy with our Virtalis StereoWorks systems and fully appreciate the power that 3D gives us over workstation-based CAD. We are able to really extract the most from our ProE CAD when it is seamlessly imported into PTC’s DIVISION Reality 64 VR rendering software. Elements of a design that seem fine in 2D are fully exposed in 3D in such a way that it becomes immediately apparent what we need to change. A recent example was some cab ergonomics which we realised needed a rethink once we’d viewed the virtual prototype in VR.”

The Virtalis StereoWorks configuration at CNH Modena boasts a rear projected, single channel active stereoscopic projection wall that allows the huge machines CNH manufactures to drive out of the wall in full stereoscopic 3D. The Christie Mirage S+14k DLP projector projects onto a 5.6x4.2 metre, flexible, Stewart screen. Virtalis designed a tailored Intersense IS900 tracking system, so that natural movement around the virtual models is maximised. CNH Modena’s engineers wear either CrystalEyes CE-3 stereoscopic LCD shutter glasses or NuVision’s Cinema Glasses, depending on whether they are interacting with the model or not. As the virtual models CNH creates have upwards of 20,000 parts, compute power and graphics rendering capability are vital. The Modena system features a 64 bit, quad core workstation coupled with an NVIDIA FX5600 graphics card. Virtalis is PTC’s Gold Partner for Advanced Visualisation, so is well placed to supply specialist software support to CNH