Product · holö
holö is willbö's mixed-reality tool for engineering. Two modules, same model, same day. Design Review lets owners, yards and class surveyors walk the vessel at 1:1 scale before a plate is cut. Site overlays that same model on the real build so PMs, foremen and quality track progress, find hidden services, and log non-conformances where they actually happen — on the grada.
What it is
holö was born inside yard reviews of our own marine bench — because PDF snapshots of a 3D model are a terrible way to decide whether a cable tray clashes with a ladder. We built the tool we wanted to use. Now it ships with our engineering.
Two modules · same model
Schematic — holö sessions run live on HoloLens 2 and Quest 3. Actual UI not shown for client confidentiality. See real captures in the cases below.
Walk the vessel at 1:1 scale before a plate is cut. Owners, yards, class surveyors and willbö engineers in the same virtual model — at the same time — from different cities.
Module · 02
Once construction starts, holö shifts gear. Yard crews open the Site module on a HoloLens or iPad and the engineering model overlays directly on the block in front of them. Progress by block, deviations between model and reality, hidden services revealed through finished walls, non-conformances anchored to the exact 3D location where they happened.
Engineering model aligned in real space on top of the physical block. Deviation arrows highlight where the build departs from the model — plate mis-alignment, pipe offsets, penetrations drilled in the wrong frame.
Load a specific service layer — water, fuel, electrical, hydraulic — and walk the ship. Runs light up through walls, decks, furniture. When you need to find a valve buried behind a finished panel, you don't guess which one to open.
Non-conformances captured with a tablet on the workshop floor — photo, voice note, assignee. Each NCR pinned to the 3D coordinate where it was detected. No ambiguity over "which weld" or "which flange".
Metrics from willbö's own marine projects · internal measurement, not external audit.
Pipeline
holö doesn't ask you to migrate. We ingest the formats willbö's own marine and industrial benches already work in — and we read the yard's preferred platform if it's different from ours. The model in holö is the same model in your master CAD tool. Nothing diverges.
| Stack | In — source formats | Out — decisions, pins, deliverables |
|---|---|---|
| Marinehull + outfitting | FORAN · AVEVA E3D · CADMATIC · IFC | PDF minutes · class-ready pins · BV/DNV observation log |
| Industrialplant 3D | AVEVA E3D · PDMS · SmartPlant 3D · IFC | HAZOP-linked pins · P&ID cross-reference · RFI queue export |
| Light / conceptearly stage | Rhino · NURBS · FBX · glTF · OBJ | Owner walkthrough video · PDF snapshots · pinned feedback |
| Yard siteconstruction | Production pack block model · MTO · schedule (CSV) | Weekly progress report · NCR register · as-built delta report |
Hardware
For a kickoff design review with an owner who's never tried MR, willbö arrives with three HoloLens 2 and four Meta Quest 3 units, pre-configured. For continued engagements, we either leave a kit on site or work with the client's fleet. No stack lock-in.
Microsoft's industrial-grade mixed reality. Hands-free, see-through. Default for yard-floor reviews where the crew needs to see both model and real steel at once.
Consumer-grade headset that just works. Default for remote design reviews where every participant is in their own office. Standalone — no PC required.
The lightweight option for foremen, quality inspectors and anyone logging a non-conformance on the floor. Same pins, same model — shared with the HMD users.
Browser viewer for stakeholders who can't or won't wear a headset. Same session, same pins. The owner's lawyer never has to put anything on their head.
holö is willbö's own tool, but the hard problems — millimetre-precise coordinates from a headset, multi-location point-cloud workflows, immersive pipe design that composes from real commercial catalogues — got solved inside two PERTE NAVAL programmes. Public money, real shipyards, peer-reviewed deliverables. The way a serious engineering tool should be built.
Desarrollo de Tecnologías para el Astillero y la Industria Naval
PYMAR consortium. willbö led the XR workpackage: turning HoloLens from a visualiser into a metrology instrument — validated against laser-scanned point clouds to millimetre tolerance, then extended into immersive pipe design with commercial catalogues.
Gemelo Digital Naval · GD Producto
NAVANTIA consortium. willbö delivered the mixed-reality HMI through which engineers interact with the Digital Twin — hierarchical 3D model, structured technical data, multi-user multi-site remote review. Validated on a live CIS demonstrator.
A fitting pipe is the last segment that joins two systems already built. Traditionally: two technicians, gauges, a plumb line, trigonometry by hand, three iterations to make the flange match the hole. It's slow, it blocks the block, and it fails with surprising regularity.
We built an XR utility on HoloLens 2 that captures the two flange positions as 3D coordinates anchored to QR references, and exports offsets ready for CAD. Then we validated it by scanning the same block with laser and measuring the same distance in the point cloud. Here are the numbers.
| Measurement | Mixed reality HOLOLENS 2 | Point cloud LASER SCAN | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pipe · flange-to-flangefitting segment, pre-removal | 1116 mm | 1116 mm | 0 mm |
| Hueco · flange-to-flangegap to close, post-removal | 1094 mm | 1096 mm | 2 mm |
| Offset (Δx)longitudinal | 667 mm | 674 mm | 7 mm |
| Offset (Δy)vertical | 894 mm | 889 mm | 6 mm |
Extracted from ENT_006.002 · DTNAVAL · dec 2025. Full deliverable available to qualified reviewers under PERTE documentation access.
A real refit rarely has a straight line between two flanges. The route bends around existing services, avoids obstacles, has to be built from commercial parts. The evolution module lets the engineer trace the pipe in-situ, in XR, composing from a real catalogue of straight lengths, elbows, tees and flanges.
Inside NAVANTWING, willbö delivered the HMI layer that connects the operator to the naval Digital Twin. The premise: in a real ship programme, the 3D model, the technical database and the build site are three different realities. We designed the interaction surface where they become one.
Structured Digital Mockup: blocks, compartments, systems, components — each addressable, each annotatable, each carrying its own technical documentation thread.
Technical data structured so each viewer sees what they need and nothing they shouldn't — critical in defence-adjacent programmes where not everyone in the session has the same clearance.
Remote, multi-user sessions validated in the CIS demonstrator. Desktop configurator feeds the MR viewer; the yard, the engineering office and the client join the same walk.
Public dissemination materials co-branded with NextGenerationEU, the Spanish Ministerio de Industria, and the consortium lead for each programme. willbö participates as technology partner across the three.
Real cases
Helsinki Shipyard tested holö during construction supervision of the NB518 series for Swan Hellenic — SH Minerva and sisters. The product was still in active development; some of what the yard's engineers asked for is what holö became.
A cruise vessel about to be delivered. Somewhere inside her, a valve nobody could locate from the drawings alone. The kind of situation where — without a better tool — you start opening panels on guesswork.
We loaded the service into holö and walked the ship. The valve lit up through every deck between us and it. It turned out to be behind a beautifully finished wooden panel — one nobody wanted to rip apart on a hunch. Because we could see exactly where it was, we knew exactly which panel to open. One panel, one cut, one fix.
"That's why holö exists. The model knows where the valve is. It's the human who's lost." — NB518 construction supervision, 2022
The yard had to paint the draft marks on a hull whose dimensions barely fit the dry-dock. The traditional method — a clear tube filled with water, set as a reference along the hull — simply didn't work at that scale.
We scanned the hull, referenced the point cloud against the engineering model back in the office, and loaded the exact draft-mark positions into HoloLens 2. Then we walked down into the dry-dock and put the headsets on.
The result: the marks appeared floating on the real steel, at the right waterline, at the right frame. The painter traced them in place. No plumb lines, no tubes, no trigonometry in a notebook.
"Superimposed reality with the mixed-reality view — the result was simply spectacular. Some people still can't see past the old way. That's not us." — willbö bench, Vigo · 2022
Expedition cruise newbuild. holö Site module deployed during block assembly — NCR register and as-built overlays, direct handoff to class dossier.
Royal Arctic Line coaster. Nodosa yard — first steel integral project in FORAN. Internal reviews on holö coordinated Vigo–Mumbai–Marín during COVID.
Industrial bench uses holö to walk clients through a plant before steel is cut — biogas, e-methanol, power retrofits. Same tool, different regulator.
Every willbö marine project runs a weekly internal holö review. It's how the Vigo and Mumbai benches stay aligned on the same 3D model, not on screenshots.
Additional client references available under NDA. Two defence-adjacent programmes, one refinery revamp, one carbon-capture pilot. Named on request.
Send us a drop of your CAD model. We'll come to your office with the kit and run a 30-min demo session on your own vessel or plant.
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Send us a drop of your model in any supported format. We'll come to your office, bring the kit, and walk your team through a design-review session on your own vessel or plant. You tell us afterwards whether the decisions it forces are worth the screen time.
Three years of co-design with Navantia, PYMAR and SOERMAR. Point-cloud reverse engineering of ship blocks, mixed-reality authoring of hierarchical naval models, multi-site XR collaboration — all written into public memoranda, all shipped as holö.
See PERTE Naval programme →
