Virtual reality and operational design

The term Process Plant encompasses any facility whose output is produced by a continuous or semi-continuous process, such as offshore oil gr gas platforms, power stations, refineries, chemical plant and pharmaceutical factories. Process plants are usually large, complex and very expensive structures with many thousands of components. Interacting with all this data in a natural and efficient manner during the design cycle poses many interesting problems for the system architect. One tool which has proved very useful is Virtual Reality. Last April Cadcentre opened the world's first Virtual Reality Auditorium dedicated to process plant design. Mr Gray will review the use of Virtual Reality in designing tomorrow's world.