I think that 3d printing houses is going to be huge but it has a long way to go. They can print the main structure, but not do things like windows, plumbing, electric, trusses, roofs, etc. So a massive part of the construction is still manual.
When the entire building or almost the entire thing is truly automatic, that is going to be a game changer. Not saying it doesn't help now to be able to 3d print a lot of it. But it is in no way a fully automated construction at this point. So the economics are going to get dramatically better as the harder parts get automated.
Re:Ask HN: How can we digitise housing
by londondev45 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @02:18PM
(#27572541)
I guess some kind of large rig, that could be lifted on to site and literally print the whole house there and then.
Well, they do have large rigs though. The problem is that the techniques are not able to "print" pipes, steel structural supports such as rebar or roofing/floor beams, windows, etc. They can mostly just put down layers of concrete.
The closest thing I've heard to a tech solution for housing is the 3D printed house that went on the market. That raises the question of whether there's some way to radically reduce the cost of creating housing. (Maybe interchangeable parts, like what revolutionized mass production?)
The only role I can even imagine for digitalization would be digital pictures of available properties -- maybe automating some kind of drone fly-by at addresses where properties are for sale, and then creating a better web site for browsing them?
Of course, there might be other fixes for housing too. (Encouraging employers to let people work from home, or at least creating jobs in a wider variety of places.) Someone once tried to convince me the solution was just to encourage people to have fewer children, because over the time the resulting population decrease would do a lot to improve the availability (and thus the affordability) of housing.