Global Reach, Zero Logistics: Presenting large machines without moving them
ENGIE Refrigeration is transforming its engineering and presentation workflows with Hololights 3D Viewer Software and XR Streaming technology.
ENGIE Refrigeration: Case Study Overview
Faced with the logistical impossibility of transporting industrial-grade chillers and heat pumps to global conventions, ENGIE Refrigeration adopted Hololight Space as their primary presentation method. This shift enables ENGIE to showcase their entire product portfolio in highest detail, while significantly enhancing customer engagement through interactive AR.
- Organization: ENGIE Refrigeration (Cooling & Heating Solutions)
- Challenge: High costs and physical limitations of presenting massive machinery at global trade shows and exclusive customer events.
- Solution: Hololight Space for high-fidelity AR presentations
- Result: Global product availability at events, allowing for the showcasing of virtual chillers that retain their original CAD complexity.
Beyond the Factory Floor: Revolutionizing Global Presentations
Engineering chillers and heat pumps comes with unique challenges. The machines are massive, the CAD data is highly complex, and the requirements for precision, efficiency, and reliability are extremely high. Traditionally, showcasing these products to customers or partners was nearly impossible without physically transporting them, a process that is both costly and slow.
Working with Hololight, ENGIE Refrigeration has solved this by visualizing its machines as full-scale 3D models in augmented reality. Whether for internal development, supplier collaboration, or global customer presentations, even the largest chillers can be “brought on stage” without ever leaving the factory floor. The models can be explored in full detail, projected into real environments, and shared in live, multi-user sessions. This shift from physical to digital logistics simplifies event planning and allows for a more flexible, worldwide product presence.
In a high-stakes sales environment, being able to visualize benefits clearly is crucial. By moving beyond 2D brochures and static screens, ENGIE Refrigeration's sales teams use AR to reveal the hidden engineering excellence that sets their chillers apart.
Rather than just hearing a technical explanation of energy efficiency or internal cooling circuits, potential buyers can step inside a 1:1 scale digital twin to witness the intricacies of the design firsthand. This immediate visual clarity does three things for the sales process:
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Builds Technical Trust: By providing "X-ray" views into the machine’s internal workings, ENGIE demonstrates total transparency. Seeing the complexity and build quality directly in AR creates a level of confidence that 2D depictions cannot match.
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Enhances Retention: Customers are far more likely to remember a 3D, interactive experience than a standard presentation, keeping ENGIE Refrigeration’s solutions top-of-mind.
- Accelerates Decisions: When a customer can walk around the machine, check maintenance access points, and visualize the exact footprint in a real-world space, the "uncertainty gap" vanishes.
This immersive approach turns a standard pitch into a shared engineering experience, ensuring that the customer doesn't just understand the value proposition in theory – they have physically visualized it.
Interactive AR allows visitors to experience complex machinery and internal components
even in a crowded trade fair environment.
Precision Planning: On-Site Spatial Validation and Installation Security
The value of ENGIE Refrigeration’s partnership with Hololight extends far beyond the exhibition floor and deep into the physical reality of the customer’s facility. One of the most critical phases in industrial cooling is the moment a massive chiller or heat pump must be integrated into an existing infrastructure.
Using Hololight’s 3D viewer, the planned machine is visualized directly at the installation site before anything is assembled or delivered. The three-dimensional model is embedded into the environment, true to scale, allowing engineers and customers to realistically assess spatial conditions and plan assembly routes more effectively.
This on-site digital twin serves as a final check for complex installations:
- Access Point Verification: Operators can physically test if there is enough clearance to reach a valve, open a maintenance hatch, or perform a repair.
- Eliminating Installation Surprises: Issues that often only became apparent during physical installation—such as a pipe clashing with a ceiling beam or a machine blocking a walkway—are now visible in advance.
- Streamlined Stakeholder Alignment: By projecting the future machine into the current space, ENGIE Refrigeration brings planning, sales, and the customer onto the same page, significantly reducing misunderstandings and avoiding costly project delays.
By identifying these "spatial conflicts" in the virtual phase, ENGIE Refrigeration ensures that when the physical machine finally arrives, the installation is a matter of execution rather than problem-solving.
On-site AR visualization ensures seamless stakeholder alignment and precise installation planning.
The Streaming Advantage: All the Detail, None of the Sensitive Data
Industrial customers require 100% fidelity to the original CAD data to make informed decisions. Most mobile AR hardware cannot handle the millions of polygons required to show a chiller’s internal structure.
Hololight’s integrated streaming technology elevates these presentations by offloading the heavy rendering to external servers. This ensures:
- Total Detail: ENGIE can show every pipe, valve, and cutting path without simplifying the model.
- Intellectual Property Security at Trade Fairs: Because the data is pixel-streamed, only encrypted image data is sent to the XR headset, while the actual CAD files stay on ENGIE’s secure local infrastructure. This allows them to show models in original complexity in public spaces without risking exposure of the highly sensitive underlying design data.
Evolution of an Industrial Pioneer
The transition from physical to digital showcases is the result of a long-term partnership focused on practical industrial results. ENGIE Refrigeration and Hololight have worked closely to optimize crucial engineering processes and tasks throughout the entire production lifecycle.
By integrating XR workflows into daily operations, ENGIE has successfully reduced development loops and improved cross-functional alignment across their technology and development departments. This collaborative approach has made ENGIE Refrigeration a global pioneer in the industry. By integrating Hololight’s XR solutions, they have turned high-performance AR into the most effective engineering and presentation tool in their technical arsenal.
“Hololight allows the models to be displayed at their actual size and with the same level of detail as the CAD file. The cooperation with Hololight is always constructive, friendly, and goal-oriented. My ideas are well received, and the team considers and implements them according to our individual requirements.”
— Jörn Stiegelmeier, Head of Technology & Development, ENGIE Refrigeration