Abstract The Personal Visualizer™ was developed to enable a casual user to create high‐quality rendered images. Providing sophisticated rendering techniques to casual users forced us to confront a number of issues and to undergo a shift in values. These issues are outlined, and the ways we dealt with them are discussed. Things we would do differently as a result of our development experiences are also discussed.

An interactive computer graphics system has been developed for the architecture profession which provides a “design environment” for the evaluation of building energy consumption. The system includes an integrated set of graphic input tools which generate the geometric and attribute data necessary for the determination of thermal load in buildings. In addition, a comprehensive set of graphical output routines has been created to allow the designer to visually interpret the results of alternative design strategies.