By Fred Bretzke
Fred Bretzke is a full-time pipe trades instructor with SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary and the general manager of A&B Plumbing & Heating. He can be reached at fred.bretzke@sait.ca.
PLUMBING
TECHNOLOGY CHANGES THE G GAME MIXED REALITY IN THE REAL WORLD
Photo credit: Trimble
THE LINGO
I
remember back in 1977 when I was a kid in London, ON: Dad was on a mission to keep the family happy, and once again he was telling us the story of something he dreamt up. My dad was a visual man who would draw a lot, layer on layer of detail; this time it was his plans for a new backyard pool. No matter what construction project Dad thought of, he loved to visualize it and draw it out. I inherited that from him, which is what makes Microsoft’s mixed reality (MR) device a dream come true for me. I first began learning how to design 3D models back in 2008, with SketchUp Version 7, which is now owned by Trimble and is on to Version 21. My boss at the time, Daryl Hilman of Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), offered SketchUp as an addition to my PowerPoint knowledge, to keep my design side busy. I loved it because I could finally design the 3D mechanicals I could see in my mind’s eye. I’d studied plumbing code long enough that I could walk into pretty much any building and visualize the mechanical bein built from the ground up, complete with any being code co clauses accompanying each pipe. I worked in i SketchUp for hours, learning how to design and edit models, just like a kid playing with Lego. I could put together a fully-plumbed model and then demo it in class through a YouTube video.
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M e c h a n i c a l
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Virtual reality (VR) is a fully artificial environment where the user is fully immersed in the virtual environment. Augmented reality (AR) involves virtual objects overlaid in a realworld environment; essentially the real world is enhanced with digital objects. When the user is interacting with both the real world and the virtual environment, it is known as mixed reality (MR).
