Patent ID: 7139685

Claim:
A room planning and design system, comprising: a virtual room space comprising a virtual representation of a physical room space; an object library of virtual objects, said virtual objects comprising virtual representations of equipment, machines, and objects that may be placed in a room; a user interface comprising: a first user interface component for selecting said virtual objects from said virtual library and positioning them in said virtual room space; a second user interface component for manipulating the positions and orientations of said virtual objects within said virtual room space; a workspace comprising a physical model of said physical room space; physical marker objects substantially scaled to said workspace for manual placement and orientation of said markers objects in said workspace; one or more detectors for detecting information regarding the positioning of said marker objects in said workspace and transmitting said information to a visualization module; and said visualization module adapted to receive said information from said detectors and utilize said information for positioning said virtual objects within said virtual room space.