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Waltham, MA - Being one of the hot and far from exhausted topics in the AEC industry, digital twin technology is viewed by the majority of companies as important or critical to their business strategies. To search for the most beneficial ways of the concept implementation, AMC Bridge suggested discussing the combination of game engines and data as a new stage of digital twin and simulation development at the new live webinar.

Held on September 22, 2022, the recent expert panel discussion was devoted to digital twins and game engines. The event was moderated by Jim Brown, Founder and President of Tech-Clarity, and comprised of David Craig Weir-McCall, Industry Marketing Manager—Architecture, Epic Games, Elizabeth Baron, Senior Manager—Enterprise Solutions, Unity, Erin Khan, National Director of Construction Solutions, Suffolk Construction, and Igor Tsinman, Co-founder and President of AMC Bridge.

The highlights below showcase the main points of the discussion and an overview of the poll results. The full recording of the event is available at the following link.

At what stage are companies with digital twins now? What tangible business values are they actually achieving from this technology?

According to the panelists’ thoughts, being of great interest to lots of industry representatives and especially resonating with construction and architecture companies, digital twin technology is still at the stage of adoption by most of them. And depending on the company size and the technology adoption level, there have been attempts to do digital twinning using CAD data with CAD tools, which were successful to a certain degree. Partial digital twins are now implemented in the automotive, aerospace, transportation, AECO fields, and others. The participants talked about the partial aspect of it because it’s really hard to bring all the required data from different systems. That’s why data unification is where the industry’s going.

Igor Tsinman gave the following advice to help drive the adoption of the digital twin: “Start small. I would suggest starting with a POC to address critical business issues that may show a “direct path” to ROI.”

Reviewing the achievements of digital twin adopters, David Craig Weir-McCall remarked, “The biggest tangible benefit that we’ve constantly been hearing from them is the operational aspect of the performance of their assets.” Another thing that is as important as the operational side is the experiential, visual aspect. To prove that, David Craig Weir-McCall remembered NASA’s Mars landing simulation a couple of years ago when the whole world watched, “The reason for that [the whole world watching] was using a visual queue because they needed the community understanding the entire complex process.”

Erin Khan, in her turn, indicated that from her perspective, the value of digital twins is in predictability, the ability to plan, and management efficiency.

What is the difference between a digital twin and model visualization?

The panelists agreed on the static nature of 3D models and the live and dynamic nature of digital twins, which drives planning predictability in management.

The discussion touched on the evolution of a 3D model used for details visualization and manipulation to a live model aimed at demonstrating its current state and predicting its behavior in the future under different circumstances. “Now the requirements for a digital twin are evolving into the direction of a comprehensive model and visualization, which combines design, building, and construction data, sometimes cost data, scheduling data, modeling IoT data, and modeling capability to predict a kind of behavior in the future or create what-if situations and test unexpected, rare situation—for example, how it behaves in the hurricane or earthquake conditions. The real value of a digital twin is to be as comprehensive modeling representation of reality as possible,” commented Igor Tsinman.

Why do digital twins need game engines?

Incorporating game engine technologies that provide fast, real-time visualization capabilities is a big boost to the adoption and implementation of the digital twin—more than 50% of the human brain capacity to process information is devoted to processing visual data. So, the experiential side and compelling visual representation are very important for the adoption of the technology.

Other advantages that game engines can suggest to digital twins include the ability to aggregate and analyze unlike data, real-time rendering, history, and operational predictability. Elizabeth Baron said, “If you have a historical look at data, you can capture what you’ve done and then use it to predict the future and see trends; then you’re much further ahead by learning from what you’ve done in the past.”

What makes implementing digital twins challenging?

Despite the huge benefits the industry can get with digital twins, there are still quite a few obstacles to wider adoption:

  •    • Technical factors
  • The digital twin could only bring real ROI if it is based on as complete information as possible. But at this moment, information is still disjointed, siloed, and separated by different formats, applications, and databases. Besides, not a single software system could be solely used to implement the digital twin.

  •    • Human factors and organizational obstacles
  • C-level executives at an enterprise need to be convinced to invest in developing and implementing the digital twin and be shown clear ROI—having attractive visual representation with game engines can definitely help.

    People who use technology on a day-to-day basis should see the benefits of using digital twins to address shortcomings and inefficiencies of the current workflows, but they also need to be trained in the new technology.

What does the poll say?

Despite the obstacles, considerable interest in the topic and results of our survey show that the digital twin concept is gaining ground among industry professionals and that, properly implemented, it may be an essential tool in proving productivity and efficiency in manufacturing and AEC.

The webinar attendees were suggested to answer the question about their companies’ experience with the digital twin. 54% of respondents have already implemented it or are in the process of implementation, which proves the wide acceptance of the digital twin concept in the industry.

For more information on how AMC Bridge enables companies in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries to implement and leverage digital twins, visit our website, in particular, check out the News, Case Studies, and Labs sections.

To keep track of similar webinars, conferences, and meet-ups, please follow our events calendar.

About AMC Bridge

AMC Bridge is a global software development consultancy serving engineering, manufacturing, and construction industries. Since 1999, we have enabled digital transformation for our clients by creating custom software solutions that eliminate data silos, connect complex applications, unlock internal innovation, and democratize cutting-edge technologies. AMC Bridge’s software development experts use extensive experience with APIs of the majority of engineering software solutions and platforms, as well as in-depth knowledge of computational geometry, 3D visualization, and many other advanced technologies to solve our clients’ critical business needs.

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