Gravity Sketch 6.6

Gravity Sketch 6.6 adds two key features to enable better precision and alignment within engineering workflows, as well as a setting to maintain visual fidelity across scaling.

Precision updates

We’ve seen industry leaders using Gravity Sketch to transform their processes by overlaying digital concepts directly onto physical prototypes using AR Passthrough. This allows modelers to validate design changes instantly without the cost of committing to clay rework.

For this workflow to work in AR, we know “eyeballing it” isn’t always enough. You need confidence that your digital overlay sits exactly where it should in the physical world. When feedback is given, you need to know exactly how many millimeters something should be moved by.

Customizable Floating Grid

In complex engineering workflows, alignment is everything. Previously, importing engineering data into the immersive environment often required visual estimation to align it with a physical clay plate in a studio.

With the new customizable Floating Grid, a grid can be brought into the Room as a collaborative object that can be moved.

  • Align with engineering systems: You can now configure the grid to match specific engineering coordinates. This ensures that when you import packaging data, it can be snapped to the correct position relative to your physical clay.
  • Sync across the room: Because the grid is an object, it is synced for every user in a collaborative space. Whether you are a designer in the studio or an engineer joining remotely, you are all referencing the exact same coordinate system.
  • Customizable setup: Change parameters including grid size, line density, and major line frequency to match the physical space.

This update allows teams to “lock” their virtual environment to the physical world, ensuring that data exported back to Alias or CAD remains perfectly aligned without the need for re-adjustments.

Importing a Floating Grid

Users can access the grid through the Import Menu by navigating to Built-in Models and importing the grid object. Once placed, it can be edited to set exact XYZ coordinates. It acts like any object, so you can grab and press the non-dominant hand trigger to snap it to the sketch origin. Multiple of these grid objects can be brought into a Room.

importing a floating grid

XYZ Reference Points

While visual evaluation is crucial for aesthetics, engineering constraints require hard numbers. The new XYZ Readout and Reference Points support more granular communication between designers and engineers.

You can place reference points anywhere in the scene to get a live, real-time readout of their precise XYZ coordinates relative to the world axis:

  • Define “hard points”: Engineers can provide specific coordinates for non-negotiable components, such as door hinges or sensor placements.
  • Measure with intent: stakeholders can be precise with feedback, by defining adjustments using the reference points. 

Snap and verify: Points can snap to the new Floating Grid or directly onto model surfaces, acting as checkpoints to verify that data hasn’t drifted during the design session.

moving a reference point in the collaborative space

Using Reference Points

Open the Toolbox from the black button on the dominant controller. Select measurement, and choose Reference Point. Users can use contextual measurements for a rough readout or place a specific reference point object in the scene. These points can be moved manually, or positioned by inputting coordinates.

accessing reference points in VR

Lock level of detail

Maintaining a smooth, immersive frame rate in Gravity Sketch often involves smart optimizations behind the scenes. One of these methods is dynamically changing an imported model’s level of detail based on your distance from it (rendering it with fewer polygons when it is far away to save performance).

However, we know that for high-stakes design reviews and detailed evaluations, visual consistency is paramount. Sometimes, the automatic optimization can be too aggressive, causing noticeable visual changes just when you need to focus on the aesthetics of a design.

To address this, we have added a new “Lock model quality” toggle in the Edit menu. This quality-of-life improvement puts the control back in your hands, allowing you to force specific objects to remain at their highest visual fidelity, regardless of how far away you are or where you move in the virtual space.

Availability and feedback

On February 17 all of these features will become available in the product for all users.

We can’t wait to see how you use these tools to increase the precision of your workflows, and merge the physical and digital spaces more effectively.

Let us know how these are changing your workflow and what you’d like to see next by leaving feedback on the Gravity Sketch Discord.

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