UPDATE: Virtual Reality Fun

Last weekend we bought a Virtual Reality headset, a 2nd hand Lenovo Explorer which is one of the variants of the Windows Mixed Reality headsets

Besides using it to play really immersive video games another cool thing you could use it for is viewing 3D models. Since my wife and I tend to build shelves to save space in our tiny apartment here is how our workflow could change

First off my wife would do a sketch of a possible design with some rough dimensions:

I would key this into a program like SolidWorks:

Then we could play around with design variations in VR to get a better idea of how it all fits together:

NOTE: See below for how to import a SolidWorks model into VR

And finally we build the thing:

Importing SolidWorks file into Mixed Reality Portal

The easiest way to view a SolidWorks model in VR is to export it as an OBJ file using this macro, also see here on how to install macros into SW. Before you do make sure that the model orientation is correct as you can only rotate in 2 axis in the Mixed Reality Portal

Now put on your headset and open the Mixed Reality Portal, here you can import the OBJ file using Mixed Reality Viewer. If you have trouble importing the object try making it less complex, for example with above model I had to remove the 3D printer for it to import properly

Once your model is there scale it manually until it looks right, we found an easy way of doing this is by physically holding an object you know the size of and scaling it to that