Anatomy of the Reflect Viewer

The Reflect Viewer Prefab is the “raw” version of the standalone viewer and is the project on which the standalone viewer is built. By understanding the different parts of this Prefab, you can start customizing it and building your own version. You could build, for example:

• A viewer that displays a customer’s branding
• A viewer with a different layout and functionality
• UI elements with a different visual style

For this tutorial, you will need:

• The Reflect Package installed via the Package Manager
• A Pro license for the Unity Editor
• To sign in to the account that has the Reflect Projects assigned to it.

After importing the Unity Reflect Prefab using Unity’s Package Manager, you will find the Reflect package in your project assets folder (Figure 01).

When you expand this folder and navigate to the Runtime folder, you’ll find the Reflect Prefab (Figure 02).

From here, you can drag the Prefab into your project Scene Hierarchy to add it to the Scene (Figure 03).

Now we’ll explore the different parts of the Reflect Viewer Prefab.

The first thing to understand is that you are currently looking at the Reflect Viewer as a Unity project. Should you decide to build it now, you will have the exact same viewer application that clients use to look at the CAD and BIM models you export from Revit or other Reflect-compatible applications.

Play the Scene to see the viewer in action. Note that the account the Viewer uses is the same account you used to sign in to the Unity Editor. In order to see your projects, make sure they are assigned to the same account you use in the Unity Editor (Figure 04).

Stop the program to return to the Editor. The Reflect Viewer canvas will now be visible in the Scene (Figure 05).

Looking at the Reflect Prefab in the Scene explorer, you’ll notice there are child elements broken into multiple parts (Figure 06).

Managers

This GameObject contains the scripts that manage the Reflect Viewer at runtime (Figure 07).

Canvas

This is the focus of this tutorial. When you expand the canvas object, you will see a list of additional child canvases. They are as follow:

Project Canvas

This object contains the visual elements that are shown when you select a project to open (Figure 08).

ARMode Canvas

This canvas contains all of the UI elements that are visible when the AR mode is activated. Changing or adding to these elements will change the AR mode’s user interface (Figure 09).

Sync Canvas

This contains the elements that make up the sync button. Changing these elements will allow you to change the look of the Sync Button (Figure 10).

Metadata Canvas

This canvas contains all the elements that make up the metadata menu that allows the user to filter the Scene by category, manufacturer, family type, etc. (Figure 11).

Settings Canvas

This canvas contains the elements that make up the settings menu (Figure 12).

Progress Canvas

This object contains all the elements that make up the progress bar when importing a new project (Figure 13).

Tabletop Canvas

This object contains all the elements that make up the UI when tabletop AR mode is activated (Figure 14).

Confirm Canvas

This canvas contains the confirmation and cancel buttons (Figure 15).

Splash Screen

This object contains all the elements that are shown on the Splash Screen during startup. The default is the Reflect logo (Figure 16).

Alerts Canvas

This object contains all the UI elements for alert pop-ups when errors occur.

Events system

This is the container for all the scripts that handle events in the Reflect Viewer.

AR Mode

This object contains all the scripts and non-visual elements required to run AR Mode in the Reflect Viewer.

VR Mode

This object contains all the scripts and non-visual elements required to run Virtual Reality Mode in the Reflect viewer

AR Session

This contains the script that controls the lifecycle and configuration options for an AR session when the AR Mode is activated.

Target

This object contains the Material that is used to show the target rectangle during the surface recognition phase of the AR session.

Root

The Root GameObject is a bit different from the rest. This object does not house anything in edit mode. At runtime, when a project is downloaded, this object is used to contain all the geometry, Materials and metadata of the model (Figure 17).

You should now have a firm grasp of the Unity Reflect Viewer Prefab and how the different components fit together. Use that knowledge to explore how to customize the viewer user interface to your specific needs using the basic Unity canvas tools.