Visual

The term 'visual' or to create 'a visual' in creative practices such as design, film making, writing, might be used as shorthand for 'visualisation' referring to the production of an image, or picture; a visualisation that illustrates how something might look, visualising the physical or mental representation of an object, situation, or information as an image.

Design and construction relies heavily on the use of visuals or visualisation to investigate and communicate complex situations and objects. It is widely used as part of the design process, and as a way of describing entire projects to clients, whole construction works to contractors or certain elements of a building to contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. Visuals are often also used as part of the planning process to communicate the proposed design not only to clients, but also local authorities, conservation officers, other stakeholders and the general public. In some cases these visuals my become part of the planning submission such as might be included in the Design and Access statement.

As such visuals can range from simple block diagrams, to highly-technical representations of construction information, or visually realistic representations of a finished building for communicating with non-expert stakeholders. Traditionally such visuals were prepared by hand as sketches, diagrams, technical drawings and 3D renderings. The emergence of computer aided design (CAD) meant two-dimensional visualisations could be created, changed and duplicated more easily, which lead the development of three dimensional CAD, whereby models of buildings could be built digitally, themselves being visualisations.

The onset of Building Information Modelling (BIM) took these digital models further and closer to what 'real' buildings and materials might be with a raft of data associated with the digital model to a point where the model is effectively a digital twin of the building. Whilst it indeed remains a visual representation of a building it goes beyond this with all of its associated data, and can be adjusted, adapted and edited as and when required. In this context the creation of 'a visual' might remain an extracted realistic image of how the building or part of the building may look, but could also refer to a moving image such as a walk or fly through and indeed an immersive visual of the building.

see also: Types of drawings, manual drafting techniques, immersive hybrid reality, mixed reality, photography, samples and mock-ups, mood boards, digital twins, augmented reality. and virtual construction models.

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings

• Assisted reality aR.
• Augmented reality.
• Building Information Modelling.
• Computer aided design.
• Computer generated imagery.
• Models.
• Manual drafting techniques.
• Notation and units on drawings.
• Shaping Space - Architectural Models Revealed.
• Symbols on architectural drawings.
• Types of drawing.
• Virtual reality.
• Visualisation in the construction industry.
• Immersive Hybrid Reality IHR.
• Mixed reality.