Seeking Advice: Adding Maintenance Functionalities to AR Visualization Project (Meta Quest 3)

Unity Engine
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Hello everyone,

I am currently working on an internship project titled “AR-based 3D Visualization System for Industrial Maintenance.”

Current Progress: I have successfully integrated a 3D model (designed in Autodesk Fusion 360) into Unity 2022.3 LTS. Using the Meta XR SDK for the Meta Quest 3, I have implemented basic interactions where I can view and grab the model using both controllers and hand tracking in a Passthrough environment.

The Goal: I want to evolve this from a simple viewer into a functional tool for equipment maintenance. I am looking for advice or recommended workflows on how to implement the following:

  1. Exploded Views: What is the most efficient way to trigger an “Exploded View” of a Fusion 360 assembly so users can see internal components?
  2. Instructional Overlays: Recommendations for UI/UX frameworks that work well in World Space to show step-by-step maintenance checklists.
  3. Component Highlighting: How to best implement a system where specific parts of the 3D model glow or change color to guide a technician to a specific area.
  4. Real-time Data Integration: Eventually, I’d like to pull “live” data (like temperature or status) onto the model. Are there specific Unity packages you recommend for this?

Any tutorials, documentation, or advice on these maintenance-specific features would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

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Cool project!
Most of these you can find solutions for when googling.
For the exploded view you could move the individual pieces away from the full model’s origin. If that doesn’t look good you could check neighboring pieces and move away from them.

For the UI, I personally just use a Canvas (I do use XRIT instead of the Meta SDK) with text and buttons and rounded corners (the rounded corners git package is nice for this, to avoid blurry edges). There is no one best way for UI yet, so make it fit your requirements and test a lot.

For highlights, I like doing this with a fresnel shader. When an object is selected just increase and decrease the fresnel strength to simulate a selection. Outlines also work, then a quick way is to duplicate the mesh, child it to the current mesh, increase scale a little bit, and have an unlit material on it only rendering blackfaces

For the live data, this depends on where it is coming from. Many different sensors have their own implementation, some even having a proper SDK

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