When the lockdown was first put in place, many of us had to cancel our plans to visit clients and contacts. We’ve since learned that staying in touch has in reality never been easier. The option of reaching out via video was under our noses the whole time, we just never truly embraced it until we were forced to. We’re all now feeling much more comfortable with connecting with others in this way. Not all forms of connection are equal though and it can sometimes feel like we lose out when we can’t be there in person.
Rewind to February of this year: five of our team attended an on-site day at Elekta – one of our biggest clients. Elekta make radiotherapy devices (using cool physics to save lives, what’s not to love?!). It was a brilliant day. We were shown around their amazing client suite, we got to meet some of the inventors in person and we got a behind-the-scenes tour of their impressive R&D labs. One day was not enough to see everything and I made a pact with one of the inventors that I would return another time for a tour of his lab and the tech he was working on. Three weeks later, the lockdown was announced.
A week or so into lockdown, I remember feeling both very fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit our client that day and also a bit sad that there might not be an opportunity for that follow-up visit for a long time. I got thinking about how we could do some kind of ‘consolation’ event that kept up our dialogue with the inventor, while somehow including an aspect of the physical lab tour that we had planned.
An idea was born: a ‘virtual CAD tour’ led by the inventor who, sharing his screen, would talk us through all aspects of a 3D model of the products he was working on. We’d be able to ask questions that the inventor could respond to by manipulating the views of the products being shown on screen. We held the event on Friday; Emily Collins and I attended from K&S. It turned out to be not only one of the most interesting client interactions we’ve had but also arguably even better than an in-person lab tour.
I’d like to share with you five things we took from this event and hopefully inspire you to add this to your toolkit for engaging with other clients. You might even want to retain this as an option for staying connected in a post-lockdown world!
1. CAD is an amazing tool for illustrating how things work.
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We were able to see the fully assembled machine from any conceivable angle. The 3D model can be rotated just as you would holding it in your hands (only in this case much more easily as the real machine weighs literally half a ton).
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We saw three machines in about seven or eight different stripped-down states, each one revealing a mechanism or connection between components that would not have been visible otherwise. Parts can be removed from view at the click of a button to show stripped-down views of the machine. Replicating these views for real in the physical environment would have taken hours if not days of disassembly and reassembly (I’m a very patient person, but everyone has their limits!)
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We were able to see how internal parts move and interact with each other. Parts can move in the 3D model as they would do in operation. In the physical world, seeing these internal parts move might have only been possible with a specially constructed machine (or by placing one’s head uncomfortably close to something that might move across and squish, impale or electrocute it at any moment).
2. The virtual tour gave us a fantastic opportunity for dialogue with the inventor – it was a truly interactive experience.
Just some of the questions we were able to ask:
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“ooh! please could you just rotate that part back to where it was; I was wondering – why is the back of it shaped like that?”
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“what’s underneath that component? Can we have a look?”
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“I’ve always wondered why that part is there. What does it do?”.
The CAD model allowed the inventor to comfortably go off script and be flexible with which aspects of the machine he discussed with us. We got much more out of the presentation by being able to take it in new and unplanned directions as we went along.
3. It generated new work
In this case, we also managed to coax the inventor into telling us enough to identify a new invention by asking questions about the R&D that was taking place on one of the components. One new and unexpected draft – thank you very much!
In this case, this would not have happened during a physical tour as a prototype had not yet been built – the components that prompted the discussion were only there in the 3D CAD model. It brought us much further upstream in their river of product development.
4. We were able to record the tour without looking like tourists
Before the meeting, the client kindly agreed that we could record the event. This will enable us to share the tour with other members of the client team who couldn’t attend. To compare this with the real world: let’s face it, if we turned up to the lab with a camcorder we would have got some funny looks (and possibly might not have been invited back).
5. It worked well for our client too!
Our client loved this idea and was happy to organise this event, not least because it was much less hassle than an in-person tour. They already had the 3D CAD models and the software is set up to allow free and easy manipulation of the views being shown on screen. As in many engineering labs, the inventors work day in day out with CAD models, and so manipulating the models is second nature to them.
They didn’t need to learn new software or painstakingly create a bespoke presentation just for us. All that was needed was a loose agenda of which aspects of the tech to discuss and off we went.
So, there you have it: a virtual CAD tour can be a fantastic way to learn about what our clients do. It won’t work for every area of technology, but if you can visually inspect the client’s product to find out how it works, and your client is willing and able to oblige, a virtual CAD tour might be just the ticket for your next invention capture meeting!