Within a manufacturing context, digital tools are used to virtually mimic physical reality in order to design, control and optimise production and logistics environments. Two typical application domains are (1) ‘virtual engineering’ where a 3D model is used to dimension and virtually commission a production process; and (2) ‘virtual user experience’ where employees can easily interact with a generated 3D environment that plays out realistic production situations related to their job content in function of user research and training.

Many challenges still exist to create and maintain such applications. Within this presentation, we will take a closer look at how system integrators, machine builders and manufacturing companies can best approach such projects. Besides the potential of each separately, the added value lies mainly in the continuous synergy between the two domains, namely virtual engineering ∞ experience, or VE∞X for short.