I often say that I have the coolest job at Dassault Systèmes. That’s because I get to spend my days with our customers, learning about all the amazing ways they’re using our solutions to make the world a better place.
For example, have you ever thought about how hospital operating rooms get designed? Modern operating rooms are packed with equipment and people. Everything has to be close at hand without being in the way. The room must be easy to navigate, yet make effective use of space. Lighting must be perfect. And when the surgery is done, every surface – even the floor – must be accessible for effective sterilization.
Clearly, the architects who design the rooms and the equipment suppliers who outfit them need a lot of input from medical professionals to achieve a room that functions at peak efficiency. But medical professionals aren’t architects. They don’t have experience reading blueprints. They might get one chance in the course of an entire career to offer their input on an operating room design. And if they make a mistake, they might have to live with it for years.
Operating room equipment and systems supplier BERCHTOLD knows the challenges well. Although it tried many approaches over the years, it never found an ideal solution for helping doctors and nurses picture the operating rooms they were helping to design – until it teamed up with EwingCole DMG, the 3D modeling and interactive applications division of a Philadelphia-based architectural and engineering firm.
EwingCole DMG built a 3D operating room visualization environment for BERCHTOLD in 3DVIA Virtools. Virtools allows operating room personnel to “build” a virtual operating room in real-time in 3D and then move around the room just as they would during an operation to validate the room’s functionality. If they find a clash or an inconvenient placement, their BERCHTOLD sales rep can change it in a few clicks. And it all runs on the BERCHTOLD reps’ standard-issue laptops, so they can take it anywhere.
“We love it,” says John Mueller, architectural design supervisor for BERCHTOLD.
“The 3DVIA Virtools operating room visualization application helps our customers see what they’re trying to achieve much faster and with fewer design ‘mistakes,’ and it easily facilitates input from broad and diverse teams of hospital workers. It really helps people who aren’t architects visualize these rooms.”
Dave Buchhofer, technical director at EwingCole DMG, says 3D visualization is critical to designing operating rooms that work at peak efficiency.
“You see things in 3D that you’d never catch in 2D renderings. Using 3D models to do interference and clash detection makes the process more time- and cost-efficient.”
And with 3DVIA Virtools, EwingCole DMG can quickly and easily update the application each time BERCHTOLD adds new equipment to its offering.
Correcting poor choices on the laptop screen is quick, easy, and costs nothing. It also helps to ensure that all of a hospital’s resources go into building the best possible operating room – not correcting unrecognized issues after construction. That’s good for hospitals and for all of a hospital’s surgery patients. Just one more example of how 3DS solutions help to make the world a better place.
Where do you next expect 3D in the operating room?
Best,
Bernie
Bernie Hearne works in Customer Referecing for Dassault Systèmes.
