Exploring cave: Using immersive environments for design work

Providing complex health and care infrastructure brings with it demanding design requirements. Information Modelling (BIM) is increasingly used as a solution to managing the complexity of the design process, and coupled with collaborative virtual environments, offers the potential to mediate design activities in ways not possible with traditional CAD models and drawings. This paper describes early analysis of the use of virtual environments for performing design. The project being studied is the design of a new hospital in the UK with all patient accommodation in single rooms. There are particular client requirements around the size of the rooms, and the visibility of patients from nursing stations. Models of the single rooms were imported from CAD models into a CAVE