How Cloud‑Based 3D Design Is Revolutionizing Immersive Spaces

Introduction

In the era of digital intelligence, city spaces are undergoing transformative changes as technologies such as digital space, intelligent design, and multimodal interaction profoundly impact the design industry. Leveraging these digital tools, spatial design is evolving toward intelligence and immersion.

Digital Space: A New Foundation for Design Software

Digitalization reshapes the entire design industry, moving from 2D to 3D, from static to dynamic. Digital space provides a new carrier and foundation for design software, enabling the transition from flat to volumetric, from planar to three‑dimensional, and from static to interactive experiences.

1. Three‑Dimensional Digital Models Built on BIM, CAD and related technologies, design software can create precise 3D digital models covering architecture, industry, and urban domains, visualizing designs and embedding rich attribute data for simulation, collision detection, and other analyses.

2. Virtual Simulation Environments Based on digital models, software can generate immersive virtual environments, allowing designers and stakeholders to experience designs firsthand, enhancing visualization and facilitating multi‑party collaboration across indoor and outdoor scenarios.

3. Dynamic Interactive Experiences Leveraging XR, AR/VR technologies, designers can freely navigate and manipulate virtual designs, providing richer sensory feedback and improving design decisions, while clients can experience proposals in a highly immersive manner.

Through the “Revealing Venice” immersive digital exhibition, we experience the spiritual interaction between digital media and participants.

In conjunction with the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 60th anniversary of China‑France diplomatic relations, the China Grand Canal Museum partnered with Paris’s Grand Palais Immersif to launch an immersive exhibition, integrating “Assassin’s Creed” game elements with iconic architecture and cultural landscapes, creating a three‑dimensional reconstruction that deepens visitor perception.

Image: China Grand Canal Museum official

Digital space offers new possibilities for exhibition design, providing a solid foundation for the integration of virtual and physical design processes.

Multimodal Interaction: Transforming Software Experience

Beyond digital space, interaction methods are evolving from mouse and keyboard to AR/VR controls, voice commands, and gesture operations, delivering designers a novel experience.

Multimodal perception includes visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory modalities, integrating multiple senses for a coherent perception.

1. Immersive Virtual Interaction Using AR/VR, designers can operate within immersive virtual environments via natural gestures and voice, greatly enhancing presence and realism.

2. Cross‑Device Collaborative Experience Design software is moving toward cross‑device collaboration, allowing seamless editing across PCs, tablets, and smartphones, boosting efficiency.

3. Intelligent Voice Interaction Natural language processing enables software to understand voice commands, streamlining tasks and reducing operational load.

4. Multisensory Fusion Experience Incorporating tactile and auditory feedback enriches the design experience, making interaction more intuitive and controllable.

Multimodal interaction reshapes software operation, making design processes more intuitive, immersive, and collaborative, as illustrated by a plant exhibition hall employing VR, AR, and holographic projection to break traditional spatial limits.

In interactive digital media, multimodal theory encompasses three layers: (1) integrating multiple senses to make information reception active and engaging; (2) extending digital art beyond visual transmission by leveraging human sensory characteristics; (3) exploring the impact of multisensory integration on digital art communication effectiveness.

How 3D Software Functions Extend

With widespread digital technology, design software functions are extending toward dissemination and collaboration. From physical displays to online sharing, from centralized to distributed teamwork, software becomes a hub for propagating design proposals and enabling immersive virtual exhibitions.

A case of the Maritime Silk Road Museum shows how immersive display and sharing can output 3D content, allowing stakeholders to experience designs vividly, while online platforms enable cross‑regional efficient sharing.

Designers can create interactive presentations that showcase panoramic effects, enhancing client understanding and acceptance during the design phase.

Cloud‑based collaboration allows real‑time co‑editing, review feedback, and efficient management of models, documents, and data, ensuring traceability and reusability.

Accumulated material libraries provide high‑quality 3D models for rapid reuse, enabling designers to customize rather than recreate from scratch.

3D cloud design software can quickly export designs as 3D models, renderings, animations, supporting multiple platforms (mini‑programs, H5, apps) for consistent experiences, rapid sharing, and broader audience reach; multimodal interaction devices further enrich visitor engagement and explore cultural themes.

Conclusion

3D technology energizes online exhibitions, blending virtual and real realms. Cloud design software, powered by digital intelligence, extends toward design dissemination and collaboration, becoming a vital tool for managing the entire design lifecycle in the new digital era.