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©iStock furniture designers, and small-scale producers who wish to
prototype designs virtually before committing to physical
materials.
The ability to design, iterate, and cost a piece of furniture
entirely in VR before cutting any wood reduces material waste
and allows for more creative exploration without financial risk.

The material cost estimation function, though approximate,
provides a useful early-stage budgeting tool. The observed
7.5 percent difference between estimated and actual costs
suggests that the calculation is sufficiently accurate for
time and setup costs that are not reflected in the system's preliminary planning, though refinement of the cost model to
current cost model. include machining and processing fees would improve its utility.
Two practical limitations of the current design were For furniture makers, the ability to estimate material costs
also identified during the assembly process. The FixedJoint before committing to fabrication is valuable for project planning
connections used between parts inside VR have no direct and comparing design alternatives.

physical equivalent; nails and adhesive were used instead, This is particularly important for small-scale producers and
and this could not perfectly reproduce the original joints in individual makers who operate with tight budgets and cannot
terms of structural behavior or appearance. afford significant cost overruns.
Additionally, the precise attachment location of each The two practical limitations identified during assembly point
part is not exported numerically and can currently only be to clear directions for improvement. Recording the offset from
inferred from the captured reference photographs, which limits each part's edge to its attachment point(s) in the exported
reproduction accuracy for complex assemblies where part blueprint, and implementing a joining method that more closely

positioning is critical. matches a realistic physical fastening technique such as nail- or
adhesive-based joints, would directly address the fidelity gap
Furniture Design, DIY & Sustainable Making between virtual assembly and physical construction.
The physical reproduction trial provided preliminary evidence Adding visual cutting guides, virtual measuring tools,
that a piece of furniture designed entirely within the proposed and numerical attachment-point data would further improve
VR system can be faithfully reproduced in the physical world fabrication accuracy.
using the exported blueprint and a wood custom-cut ordering The Meta Quest 3's passthrough capability could also be
service. This finding has several important implications for leveraged to overlay virtual objects onto physical workspaces,
furniture design, DIY practice, and related fields. allowing users to refine designs in situ and verify part positions

The most significant contribution of this study is the against real materials.
demonstration of an end-to-end workflow from virtual design to Beyond DIY, the proposed system has potential applications
physical fabrication. Existing VR-DIY systems let users design in design education and industrial prototyping. Design students
objects but provide no pathway to physical realisation. Our could use the system to experiment with furniture forms quickly
system addresses this gap by exporting a complete set of and safely, then export dimensions for physical model-making.
part dimensions, six-view photographs, and cost estimates. Similarly, furniture designers could use VR to test ergonomics
This capability has direct practical value for DIY enthusiasts, and aesthetics before building physical prototypes, reducing