Virtual reality and project management for astronomy

Over the years astronomical instrumentation projects are becoming increasingly complex making necessary to find efficient ways for project communication management. While all projects share the need to communicate project information, the required information and the methods of distribution vary widely between projects and project staff. A particular problem experienced on many projects regardless of their size, is related to the amount of design, planning information and how that is distributed among the project stakeholders. One way to improve project communications management is to use a workflow that offers a predefined way to share information in a project. Virtual Reality (VR) offers the possibility to get a visual feedback of designed components without the expenses of prototype building, giving an experience that mimics real life situations using a computer. In this contribution we explore VR as a communication technology that helps to manage instrumentation projects by means of a workflow implemented on a software package called Discut designed at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). The workflow can integrate VR environments generated as CAD models.