South Africa and other developing countries are currently engaged in a mass electrification drive. This requires a good software infrastructure for designers. The current generation of tools are based on two-dimensions and consist of stand-alone tools. This paper introduces a data visualization software package that allows the designer to immerse himself into the 3D environment that has been created from a 2D CAD drawing. The electrical and physical parameters of the objects in the environment can be viewed and manipulated. The software is supported by a distributed virtual reality software architecture, which allows for networked low-cost personal computers to handle the burden of creating this environment and interacting with this world. The software presented in this paper will be tested to determine how useful data visualization is in this application.

Keywords: data visualization, virtual reality application, distributed virtual reality, electrical reticulation design tool.