back to article Shack in flat-pack bric-a-brac lack flap? Whack on this 3D flat-pack app

Ikea, champion of the disposable Allen key, is launching an app to show how its self-assembly furniture would look in your home – if you could put it together properly. The new software, available for Android and iOS gadgets at the end of this month, overlays 3D models of selected flat-packed firewood onto live video of one's …

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  1. Sandpit
    Thumb Down

    What a shite title.

    Go easy on the weed boys, your starting to talk bollocks

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      I disagree...

      I disagree Sandpit . I come to El Reg (in part) for the witty titles and double entendres.

      Keep up the good work chaps!

      1. 7-zark-7

        Re: I disagree...

        +1 for headline excellence.

        Keep it going Reg.

    2. hplasm
      Thumb Up

      Bollocks!

      Best title so far!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      *you're

      Thumbs up, if I wasn't AC, for the Reg's Headline department.

  2. Anonymous Custard

    3D movable instructions next?

    Now if they could expand it to give you better (3D zoomable and rotate-able and possibly animated) instructions on how to build the things it would be useful. Whilst some of their stickman instructions are OK, others seem to require defiance of a few laws of physics to get the item together.

    Or would there be too much risk of your phone/tablet ending up being used as an impromptu hammer?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Luke McCarthy

        Re: 3D movable instructions next?

        Check out YouTube, there are already video instructions for some Ikea stuff available.

    2. Simon Harris
      Happy

      Route Optimiser?

      No, actually what they really need to do is let you build an inventory of all the things that look nice in the Ikea VR app, and then plan an optimised route around the nearest shop where everything's in stock to check them out in the fleshwood/chipboard along with their locations on a map of the warehousey bit where you actually pick up all the flat-packs.

      Also, with a report on stock levels of Swedish meatballs in the canteen!

      1. Anonymous Custard

        Re: Route Optimiser?

        Have they started doing those again (the meatballs that is)? I recall they were taken off-sale when horse was found in some in one of the Continental stores (forget where offhand).

        Must admit they were one of the main reasons for going to Ikea in the past.

        1. Simon Harris
          Happy

          Meatballs

          They're still listed on the restaurant page for my local Ikea in Croydon.

  3. thesykes

    Hmmm... never had a problem putting Ikea stuff together, usually very easy.

    1. Philip Cheeseman
      Thumb Up

      Agreed. Unlike most flat pack suppliers Ikea instructions are easy to read and follow plus the finished product is half decent. Wouldn't touch argos/tesco etc flat pack with a large barge pole. You can't beat ikea for furnishing a house on the cheap.

      1. wowfood

        Wait, you actually read the instructions?

        Only time I've had to read instructions was for a collapsable weights bench I'd bought, and that's only because it had about 20 different types of screw in the pack (for no apparent reason but to annoy you)

        I agree though, it's nice having a way to see if the furniture will fit in with the rest of the room. Nothing worse than thinking "That's a nice table" getting it home and finding that, although nice, it just doesn't fit with the rest of yoru stuff.

      2. Simon Harris

        All the Ikea stuff I've put together has been pretty simple, although I can't claim any flat-pack furniture (including Homebase and a small amount of Argos stuff and a couple of desks of unknown origin that I've had to disassemble and reassemble at various times) has posed any problems either. The only thing you have to watch out for is the odd missing fitting, peg, etc. However as far as quality goes, there seems to be two levels at Ikea, the decent stuff and the rest. My decent Ikea shelves have held up very well over the past 14 years or so, some of the cheaper Ikea ones have warped horribly.

        1. Muscleguy

          My experience has been that you usually have the odd bit like a dowel or a screw cover extra rather than something missing. I still have a collection of same.

          1. Simon Harris
            Happy

            So that's where my missing dowel went.

            Give it back, Muscleguy!

    2. Trygve Henriksen

      Same here.

      The secret to IKEA packages is to check the contents list and sorting the bits. Reading through the entire sequence before starting the assembly doesn't hurt, either, as it'll help you to be aware of the workspace needed and possibly orientation. (Some pieces of furniture needs to be flipped over or rotated during assembly... )

      From what I understand, a lot of the 'returns' they get has marks of screws in plug/pin holes and glue residue where no glue was supposed to ever be used. Sometimes even on furniture that came without glue at all...

  4. Ralph B

    Next Steps

    The next step should be for the various dating sites to allow you to visualise prospective partners together with the visualisations of the Ikea furniture.

    And then via Google Glass you could finally live The Sims dream. (For 15 minutes until the battery run out.)

  5. Beamerboy
    Paris Hilton

    What is really needed

    For all those people with sensible sized lounges is this app for TVs - far too many small two bed terraced houses near me with oversized TVs - maybe if they could see what 60" looked like intheir house they would have bought something more appropriate!

    Paris - because she likes everything life sized

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      Re: What is really needed

      I thought Paris preferred everything oversized???

      PS, you have to be a complete WOMBLE if you cant assemble IKEA flat packs - the BEST instruction booklets of any flat pack I have encountered.

      Try doing one written in CHINGLISH!!!

      My coat, the one with the mini toolkit in the pocket.

  6. Arachnoid

    No I think it looked better over there

    It`ll save you keep moving it to the satisfaction of the other half......"

  7. David Male

    ...but it appears I still need to make a 50 mile round-trip to Ikea's store to pick up a dead-tree catalogue for it to work?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      fool. you could have requested a pdf manual from customer services...

  8. jubtastic1

    That actually looks useful

    Looking forward to playing with this, good use of augmented reality.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    and no-one mentioned Douglas Adams?

    The sofa stuck in the stairwell was one of the most humourous, bacheloresque that I've ever read.

    My mom ran a commercial nursery in the early 1970's and she had kits with styrofoam trees and shrubs along with cardboard houses that she could use to demo designs for her clients.

    1. Simon Harris
      Joke

      Re: and no-one mentioned Douglas Adams?

      To misquote HHGTTG...

      The secret to constructing Ikea furniture is...

      to always know where your dowel is.

  10. Irongut

    overlaying jobs onto the landscape

    There's an AR app that shows you what a scene would look like if Steve Jobs were there? The fanboys must love it!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Building a home-made low-earth-orbit craft to launch and release some plastic toys under observation from a camera attached to an open-board miniature hobby computer broadcasting slowscan video from orbit -- no problem, pretty sure anyone can do it, hey-ho look how easy it all is.

    Put together a simple collection of well-engineered factory built parts to make a bit of furniture so basic and straightforward that the instructions contain no words apart from the brand and the name of the product, the manual literally does not need reading -- understood to be a piece of dangerous tat you'd have to be an idiot to attempt constructing.

    This didn't start out as a Linux/OSX, Android/iOS, Windows/Windows allegory but there you are.

  12. Nuke

    Tape Measures

    FTFA :- "But seeing if the sofa will fit in the room makes sense, especially given the difficulty of getting Ikea products back into their original packaging if they turn out to be too big."

    FFS, is the general standard of education now so low that people are incapable of using a tape measure? Or is it just IKEA customers?

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